House Appropriations Committee Approves $10 Million for Vision Trauma Research Program
Legislative Update
June 10, 2014
Today, the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved a Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 funding bill for the Department of Defense (DOD) that includes $10 million for the Vision Trauma Research Program (VTRP). The measure now awaits action by the full House, although no date has been scheduled for a vote on the bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to begin work on its DOD funding bill.
If approved by the full House, this would be the third consecutive year that the VTRP has been funded at the $10 million level.
In addition to the amounts appropriated by Congress, the VTRP usually has funds added to it by other DOD research programs, notably the Psychological Health/Traumatic Brain Injury (PH/TBI) Research Program, with the requirement that the transferred funds should be used for research projects focused on visual dysfunction related to TBI.
Speaking at NAEVRs May 5 Defense-Related Vision Research Opportunities session at the ARVO Annual Meeting in Orlando, Robert Read from the DODs Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), which administers the VTRP, announced that in the current funding cycle, the VTRP expects to award almost $25 M in grants, reflecting the FY2013 and FY2014 appropriated amounts plus extra funding transferred from the PH/TBI program.