House proposes $350M increase for dementia research

The U.S. House of Representatives has proposed spending an additional $350 million on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia research.

The House Appropriations Committee released a draft fiscal 2017 Labor, Health and Human Services funding bill to be considered in subcommittee any day.  In total, the draft bill includes $161.6 billion in discretionary funding, a decrease of $569 million below the fiscal year 2016 enacted level and $2.8 billion below President Barack Obama’s budget request.

“This bill achieves its goal of reducing discretionary spending by more than half a billion dollars, all the while prioritizing where funding is needed the most,” says LHHS Subcommittee Chairman Tom Cole in a press release. “Several important programs through the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that benefit many Americans receive a substantial increase in funding, often well beyond the amount the President requested in his budget,” LHHS said.

The proposed funding bill would give the NIH a total of $33.3 billion, $1.25 billion above the fiscal year 2016 enacted level and $2.25 billion above the President’s discretionary budget request.

The bill also provides increases for several critical research initiatives, including:

• $1.26 billion, a $350 million increase, for the Alzheimer’s disease research initiative;
• $195 million, a $45 million increase, for the Brain Research through Application of Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) initiative;
• $300 million – the full requested amount – for the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI); and
• $12.6 million for the Gabriella Miller “Kids First” initiative, dedicated to pediatric cancer research.

The bipartisan effort comes just weeks after the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed a historic $400 million increase in Alzheimer’s research funding. Last year, the president approved legislation from the House of Representatives for an additional $350 million for federal Alzheimer’s disease research, the largest ever increase.

Experts estimate research funding must be at least $2 billion a year to meet the first goal of the National Alzheimer’s Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease by 2025.

Nicole Stempak

Nicole was Senior Editor at I Advance Senior Care and Long Term Living Magazine 2015-2017. She has a Journalism degree from Kent State University and is finalizing a master’s degree in Information Architecture and Management. She has extensive studies in the digital user experience and in branding online media. She has worked as an editor and writer for various B2B publications, including Business Finance.