Group Calls For Increased Funding to NIH

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Topics: Politics, Economy
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A national health care group is using the economic development angle to push for more health care funding. Ideastream's® Rick Jackson reports.

Ohio received 712 million dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health during 2007, with the largest single amount, about 186 million dollars, going to Case Western Reserve University. Other institutions gaining grants included the Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland State University.

But Dee Mahan, Director of Global Health Initiatives for the health advocacy group Families USA says it’s about more than just cash. It’s about ‘actual benefits’ - including the jobs created by the research that’s done here - much of it by foreign companies with a stake in the outcomes.

MAHAN:"In new business activity we’re talking about 649 million dollars. Jobs created for the state of Ohio was 11,895.”

Ohio, Mahan says, ranks eighth in the nation in the number of health jobs from foreign firms, with more than 213,000.

But she contends federal funding for NIH has failed to pace inflation the last five years, decreasing purchasing power by 13 percent, and costing Ohio additional jobs.

The group blames the Bush administration for allowing tax cuts and funding the war to shrink the available pool of funds for research. 

Rick Jackson - 90.3.