NIH Reform Heads Toward Passage After Years of Work WASHINGTON – The House can take a giant step Tuesday to improve the federal government’s ability to discover new medical treatments and cures when it votes on reforming the National Institutes of Health. The reauthorization bill, the first of its kind in 13 years, was approved last week on a thoroughly bipartisan vote of 42-1 by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where it had been a top priority of Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas. In recent years, Congress has doubled NIH’s budget to approximately $28 billion, but left the hodge-podge structure of the agency untouched. The result was more money fueling the inherent inefficiency in which research was sometimes duplicated by institutes which literally didn’t know that they were copying each other’s work. If enacted, the committee’s bipartisan bill would represent the agency’s first agenda-setting reauthorization since 1993. Barton’s bill has won the endorsement of 46 leading scientific societies, research institutions and patient-advocacy groups, including the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the Association of American Universities, the American Heart Association, the March of Dimes and the Parkinson’s Action Network. “This legislation will provide for a more transparent agency that gives the public a full view of what the NIH has done and where they are going,” said Barton. “The legislation also encourages collaboration among the institutes and fosters more trans-institute research. “Academics, stakeholders, disease and patient advocacy groups, scientists, researchers, grantees, the NIH, and members sitting on both sides of the aisle agree that this legislation is built on sound policy and serves to further strengthen the NIH,” he added. Specifically, the National Institutes of Health Reform Act would: Authorize a five percent annual increase in NIH’s budget for fiscal years 2007-2009; Launch a new, agency-wide electronic reporting system to catalogue all of the research activities of the NIH in a standard format; Limit the overall size of the NIH to the current 27 institutes and centers; Set up a “common fund” to support particularly promising research that cuts across multiple institutes or centers. The common fund is capped at five percent of the overall NIH budget; and Create a Scientific Management Review Group, composed of institute and center directors and other experts, to evaluate NIH’s structural organization at least once every seven years and propose any restructuring plans it deems necessary. ####