How Does the United States Fund Medical Research?

A quick look into the heart of America's health research

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About the Source
The mission of RICA is in part to deliver trustworthy, fact-based information rigorously vetted by experts to inform the public and counter deliberate misinformation during this turbulent era.The sources for this article include the American Medical Association for American Colleges, a non-profit dedicated to the education of America's medical doctors, and the NIH itself, legally mandated by congress to disclose what research gets funded.

Ever wonder how those life-saving cancer treatments or heart medications made it to your pharmacy? The answer lies largely with a government agency you might not know much about: the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The National Institutes of Health is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. The NIH invests most of its nearly $48 billion budget in medical research seeking to enhance life and to reduce illness and disability. This is direct investment into the United States population with research into health and disease that brings cures to your doorstep.

Here’s how it works: Nearly 82 percent of NIH’s funding is awarded for research across the United States and in all 50 states. Most of this funding is through almost 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every state. So instead of doing all the research in one place, the NIH spreads the money around to qualified and driven scientists at universities and research centers across the country.

The results speak for themselves. Cancer deaths in the United States declined 33% from 1991 through 2020, accounting for an estimated 3,820,800 extended lives. That artificial heart valve your grandfather got? The NIH funded the development of the first artificial heart valve, including the first successful replacement at the NIH Clinical Center in 1960.

This investment isn’t just saving lives, it’s boosting the economy too. Every dollar of research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) delivers $2.56 in economic activity and awarded more than $36.9 billion to researchers, supporting more than 408,000 jobs and generating over $94.5 billion in new economic activity nationwide.

Bottom line: Your tax dollars are funding research that’s literally keeping people alive while creating jobs and driving innovation. Pretty good return on investment, if you ask me.

Sources:

National Institutes of Health. “Grants & Funding.” NIH.gov. https://www.nih.gov/grants-funding AAMC. “Congress must support robust federal funding for the NIH.” https://www.aamc.org/about-us/aamc-leads/congress-must-support-robust-federal-funding-nih Harvard Gazette. “NIH funding delivers exponential economic returns.” https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/03/nih-funding-delivers-exponential-economic-returns/ National Institutes of Health. “Budget.” https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/organization/budget