With Congress and the White House reaching a spending limit agreement for both FY2024 and FY2025, there will be increased pressure on funding the nation's priorities. Because the agreement will limit the amount that can be spent on a wide range of programs, it is imperative you tell your policymakers that supporting the National Institutes of Health must remain a priority. NIH is a vital and necessary part of advancing our understanding of a wide spectrum of diseases, disorders, and conditions. Congress has provided eight consecutive years of increased support for NIH and basic research. However, the spending limits now in effect may change that. FY2024 will face budget constraints and competing priorities for limited resources. NIH could suffer the consequences.

 

It is imperative that Congress understand how NIH research impacts patients, your state, and the advancement of our biomedical research knowledge. The Academy, along with its partners in biomedical research advocacy, continues to recommend Congress provide at least $50.9 billion to NIH's base budget, a $3.4 billion increase over FY23, while ensuring proportional increases to all of the Institutes and Center within NIH to support the role the radiology and imaging research plays across a wide range of diagnostics, treatments, and therapeutics that ultimately benefit patients and their families. These figures continue the dependable increases over the last several years of keeping NIH ahead of inflation. In addition, the Academy will continue its support of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and maintain the position that ARPA-H funding cannot come at the expense of NIH's investigator-initiated research. Both of these points must be delivered by you to your policymakers in order to keep NIH a national priority.

 

Send your elected officials a message urging them to support NIH and the full range of biomedical research efforts across the multitude of Institutes and Centers that fund radiology and imaging research. You may personalize these emails to tell them about your work to improve patient outcomes and encouraging time to invest in the scientific enterprise.

 

Without your voice, your elected officially will not fully realize the potential and benefits of fundamental research at NIH. Your advocacy efforts to advance biomedical research funding have resulted in significant victories and increases over the last eight years, but without a constant effort we risk backsliding to a time when NIH received no funding increases--particularly as costs increase and other issues fill the news. Contact your members of Congress today to tell them to continue supporting biomedical research and advances in imaging.