After 20 years of holding an HIV / AIDS research funding a fixed rate of 10% of its overall budget, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will let slip that level this year. Recent data from the public on the grant funding success rates reflect a boost to the abandonment of fallowing. In many institutions, AIDS grants were much easier to obtain than non-AIDS funding, suggesting that officials are struggling to find ways to spend money
early 190 when the HIV / AIDS was still exploding, Congress and NIH decided to keep the part of the NIH budget devoted to HIV / AIDS about 10% regular year after year. But some institutes have since struggled to find ways to spend their allocation AIDS, sometimes stretching the definition of research on AIDS or loosening of quality standards. And recently, some members of Congress have questioned whether the special treatment for this disease still make sense at a time when deaths from AIDS in the United States declined.
Last year, the NIH director Francis Collins announced that the agency would move its AIDS funding to focus more directly on vaccines and treatments. And in December 2015, with the approval of Congress, the official news agency stepped back from the formula of 10%.
The financial results can be seen in the NIH budget request for fiscal year 2017. The agency holds the AIDS flat this year at $ 3 billion in 2015 and expected to remain there in 2017 (p. 3 here). Therefore, because the NIH budget grew by nearly 7% last year, and the NIH request another bump next year, the portion from AIDS will increase from 10% in 2015 to 9.3% this year and could fall to 9% in 2017.
also this year, the agency moves to $ 154 million expire AIDS grants to new priorities, Collins said a major disruption to a set of researchers must now ask for non-AIDS money to continue their work. NIH plans to move another $ 60 million to $ 70 million per year in the coming years.
Success rate data that Science Insider obtained in response to a public records request help explain why AIDS fallowing was unpopular at NIH. (Click here to see a chart). A six institutes that received the lion's share of financing for AIDS, part of grant proposals examined that were funded were generally 4 to 5 percentage points higher percentage of AIDS grants to all subsidies. (The National Institute of Mental Health was an exception.) For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which spent $ 300 million on AIDS in 2014, totaling 30% of its overall budget, about 23% of AIDS proposals won funding compared. with only 18% of global grants
NIH notes that the highest success rate for AIDS does not always mean quality bar was lower; some institutes have been spending AIDS funds for a specific subject that has only attracted some proposals which were of very high quality. Yet in some institutes, the program officers have had to get creative on how to spend the funding of AIDS.
* Update, February 24, 9:13: The article has been revised to clarify that in several institutes, the difference in success rate for grants AIDS in relation to all grants is 4 to 5 percentage points.
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