FY 2009 Appropriations Process

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Even though we are only about half way through FY 2008, the NIH is well into the budget planning and justification cycle for FY 2009. NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni recently provided testimony before the U.S. House Committee on AppropriationsĀ — Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on the President’s FY 2009 NIH budget. The President’s budget request totals $29.465 billion, funding essentially the same level of competing research project grants in 2009 as estimated in 2008.

In his testimony, Dr. Zerhouni emphasized a new strategic vision for medicine, a prospective management approach based on “the 4 P’s of Medicine”: Predictive, Personalized, Preemptive, and Participatory. To that end, NIH is strategically investing in research to further our understanding of the fundamental causes of diseases at their earliest molecular stages and is greatly expanding the scope of research to discover novel ways to stop disease in its tracks before it cripples us. He further stressed NIH’s continuing commitment to a competitive and viable scientific support system, especially for new and early-career scientists. Because long-term demographic projections show the aging of the Nation’s scientific workforce, he supported an immediate and substantial proactive stance in protecting early-career scientists to avoid the situation’s having negative and long-lasting impact on our competitiveness and innovation as a Nation.

Visit the NIH’s Financial Operations and Office of Budget Web sites for additional information.