More on the NIH ARRA distribution
August 21, 2009
Poster Version
from Research!AmericaAs PhysioProf just posted, we received a note from Heather Benson of the New Voices blog alerting everyone to a new poster created by Research!America. These sources also point us to a nifty web site which allows you to examine the distribution of NIH ARRA funding in the US.
Pretty interesting. In a couple of prior posts I talked about using NIH funding data to enhance your communications with your Congressional Rep I notice that the ARRA tables provided by the Research!America site include a national rank for each Congressional district. I make out the top Congressional NIH ARRA recipient districts as:
1. MA 8
2. NC 4
3. CA 53
4. NY 14
5. PA 2
Hmm, pretty good concordance with the overall NIH allocation, the only outlier seems to be MD 07, which falls to 6th on the ARRA list from 4th overall.
If you have received any ARRA funding I would encourage you to print out the poster and stick it up somewhere. Remember, all those support staff of your institution right down to overnight custodians are taxpayers and voters. It is important to communicate to them that the stimulus is supporting your work (and therefore their jobs) just as much as the new bridge-fixing or pothole-filling projects that impede their commute.
DrugMonkey 
August 21, 2009 at 8:00 pm
You know, if you go here: http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm?CFID=53720&CFTOKEN=68545048 and check the box for NIH Recovery Act Projects, you can also see which specific projects received NIH funding. Unfortunately, there’s no way to break it down into disease/condition for the recovery funds specifically like there is here (for all NIH funded projects, regardless of funding source): http://report.nih.gov/rcdc/categories/ although perhaps projected 2010 estimates can give some idea … however, the #1 “condition” is listed as clinical research. It’s also of interest that substance abuse is set to receive $1,836, drug abuse (NIDA only) is set to receive $1,045, and alcoholism is set to receive $473.
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August 21, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Also of interest:
There is essentially no NIMH funding for pharmacotherapy efficacy trials.
Has the government officially decided to leave the pharmacotherapy trials to the pharmaceutical companies? Personally, I find the complete absence of well-designed comparative efficacy studies of psychiatric drugs to be quite disturbing.
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August 22, 2009 at 7:53 pm
If you have not received the ARRA funding, print out the poster and stick it up somewhere. Remember, all those support staff of your institution right down to overnight custodians are taxpayers and voters, and they were robbed of their earnings to pad someone else’s wallet.
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August 23, 2009 at 10:44 am
Note that NIH has also developed an ARRA map that makes it easy to see individual projects by institution. See http://report.nih.gov/recovery/arragrants.cfm
Furthermore, note that a substantial amount of ARRA funds are yet to be awarded with more awards coming out each week and the most of the Challenge, GO, and faculty start-up (P30) awards to be made before the end of September.
Jeremy Berg
Director, National Institute of General Medical Sciences
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August 23, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Furthermore, note that a substantial amount of ARRA funds are yet to be awarded
It will be interesting to see how the “rich get richer” interpretation of the ARRA distribution changes. I’m suspecting it won’t change a bit but perhaps we are seeing the effect of the administrative supplements coming in early and things will change with the stuff that was peer reviewed?
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