Highlights from the President's FY15 Department of Health and Human Services Budget Request

Enacted FY14 funding levels are used for comparisons unless otherwise noted.

The administration’s FY15 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is $77.1 billion in discretionary spending, reflecting a 1.6 percent decrease from FY14 enacted funding levels. Discretionary spending accounts for only 7.5 percent of the total proposed HHS budget. Mandatory spending for programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program account for the balance. Total FY14 budget authority for HHS would be $1 trillion (6 percent increase over FY14 enacted).  Through the Opportunity, Growth and Services Initiative (OGSI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be allocated $970 million to support approximately 650 additional new grants across several initiatives including:

• $30 million for a new advanced research program to support high-risk high-reward projects modeled after the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NIH entities would contribute an additional $100 million to the program; and,
• $100 million in increased funding for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovation Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative.

The budget provides $462 million to support the advanced development of next generation medical countermeasures against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats including $415 million to develop and procure new measures through Project Bioshield. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) also would be allocated funding to support advanced research and development of next generation medical countermeasures.

The proposed Universal Influenza Vaccine Development initiative would be allocated $50 million to support the advanced development of vaccine candidates for universal influence vaccine and to support activities to improve the basic effectiveness of existing vaccines bringing total FY15 funding for universal influenza vaccine development to $123 million. The initiative would be administered by the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

In FY15, NIH would receive $30.1 billion (0.7 percent increase) and an additional $970 from OSGI, increasing the NIH budget to $31.3 billion in FY15. This funding would support a total of 34,197 research project grants, including 9,326 new and competing awards (3.7 percent over FY14) with 1,635 new SBIR/STTR awards. Approximately 11.3 percent of the budget would support intramural programs consisting of basic and clinical research activities. Approximately 83 percent of NIH’s available funding would support the extramural research community including universities, medical schools, hospitals and other research facilities. The total request for the 24 institutes of NIH and the Office of the Director breaks down as follows:

Note: NIEHS’ total request of $742 million includes appropriations allocated to HHS, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Labor.

Approximately 54 percent of the proposed NIH research budget is devoted to basic and biomedical and behavioral research, including $100 million to expand its contribution to the BRAIN initiative. NIH also would continue the implementation of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP), a venture between NIH, ten biopharmaceutical companies and several organizations to develop new diagnostic and therapeutics. Strategic research areas of investment include $3 billion for research on HIV/AIDS and $566 million for Alzheimer’s Diseases research.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

 The FY15 total program level request for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is $440 million, a decrease of $24 million (5.2 percent) from FY14 enacted. AHRQ provides extramural research support in the form of grants, cooperative agreements and research contracts to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare. The primary research areas of funding for AHRQ include:

• $106 million (13.5 percent increase) for Patient-Centered Health Research;
• $93 million (16.2 percent decrease) for Health Services Research, Data and Dissemination including $20 million for new investigator-initiated research grants on the quality and efficiency of healthcare services ($15 million will focus on economics research);
• $73 million (1.4 percent increase) for General Patient Safety Research including $15 million for a new initiative that will expand the implementation of recent advances in patient safety;
• $23 million (23.3 percent decrease) for Health Information Technology Research including $20 million to support 40 grants for foundation health IT research; and,
• $11 million (52.2 percent decrease) for Prevention/Care Management Research.