Legislative Updates

House Publishes Appropriations Markup, Includes $47.6 Billion for NIH, $891.186 Million for NEI

On Thursday, June 30, the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on Labor, Health, and Human Services and Related Agencies (LHHS) marked up the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 LHHS Funding Bill. The House bill provides an increase of 124.2 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services (an increase of $15.6 billion from FY22 and $298 million below the President’s budget request).

The bill includes an increase of 5.5% for the National Institute of Health (NIH) from $44.96 billion to $47.5 billion. The bill also includes $891,186,000 for the National Eye Institute (NEI), an increase of nearly $27.3 million from the FY22 enacted level (or 3.2%).

The bill also includes an increase of $100 million for health disparities research and $64 million for the Office of Research on Women’s Health. The 3.2% increase that NEI received is consistent with the across-the-board increase of 3.2% for NIH Institutes and Centers to support the biomedical research workforce and expand on promising research.

With respect to COVID impacts on research at NIH, the draft bill would extend multiyear grants obligated through FY2017 from the NIH to be extended for availability through FY23 if the NIH Director “determines the project suffered an interruption of activities attributable to SARS-CoV-2.”

Finally, the draft bill includes $2.75 billion for the Advanced Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) within HHS, but outside of the NIH. Currently, the Administration has established ARPA-H within NIH but reporting to the Secretary of HHS. The funds for ARPA-H would be available through FY25 and represents a $1.75 billion increase over the FY22 enacted level of $1 billion to initially establish ARPA-H which was included in the FY22 omnibus.

NAEVR has issued a press release about the funding bill.