Funding Policy

A full-year budget and funding lines

In his blog post of a couple of weeks ago, NIA Director Dr. Richard Hodes mentioned that we would soon be calculating the pay lines for the new fiscal year. I’m happy to announce that we’ve done the math and come up with our initial funding policy for FY 2019.

Beginnings: Our first steps in making awards in FY 2018

The new fiscal year started on October 1, and we began it with hope in our hearts for continued good news on our budget. Our increased appropriations in FY 2017 allowed us our most generous funding lines in our general allocation in many years, along with a positive windfall for research in Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Still, we started the year again on a now-familiar continuing resolution, which holds our current funding to the FY 2017 level—at least until December 22.

Every year at NIA brings its own challenges. This one was special -- and how!

In recent years, we have scrambled to try to maintain a funding line by finding ways to stretch what seemed to be ever-shrinking resources. Then a trickle of new money arrived—beginning in FY 2014—targeted towards Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). In the following years, that trickle became a stream, and then a river. In FY 2017, it was a $400 million river.

A footnote to our funding line: The AD PARs

A recurring question from readers after I post a new funding line blog post is: Does that line apply to my application? It usually does, bringing good news to those blessed with applications within that line. The normal caution applies—the line means that we expect to pay awards. Still, the funding line doesn’t apply to everything.

September pay line update

We have pay line updates! The big news is that the final career development awards pay line for the year is the 20^th percentile. Of equal interest is the fact that we’re increasing our general allocation research grant pay line to the 11^th percentile. We also have news on fellowships and small business awards.

A word about two-stage review of program projects

A few months ago, NIA decided to follow the practice of two other NIH institutes and arrange two-stage review of program projects. We have recently completed the first review cycle under this new review model. We launched this two-stage effort because of concern that the separate small committee reviews which each handled one program project lacked the context for scoring that is available to the customarily larger panels who review a substantial set of research grant applications in one meeting.

NIA pay line recovers a bit

We have bumped the NIA general allocation up by one point all around. For most research grants—at least the ones under $500k a year—that pay line is now the 10^th percentile. We are paying new investigator R01 applications to the 18^th percentile and early-stage investigators can now breathe comfortably with the knowledge that their R01 applications are being paid to the princely 20^th percentile!

NIA funding policy and pay line update

As the funding policy statement makes clear, the fiscal year 2016 budget is a historic first for NIA. Yes, we received a very substantial increase for research related to Alzheimer’s disease—$350 million. But, in addition to that, we received a 4.2-percent increase in our general budget. That amount is above the rate of inflation for the first time since 2003, at the end of the era of doubling the budget. But, the competition for new and renewing awards remains fierce.

An encouraging start to the new year

As we begin the new calendar year, I am happy to discuss exciting news about the NIH and NIA budgets for fiscal year 2016. As many of you probably know by now, on December 18, President Obama signed into law the FY2016 Omnibus Bill, which gave NIH an overall increase of $2 billion, or about 6.6 percent, above the FY2015 appropriation level. Importantly for NIA, this included an increase of approximately 33 percent over our FY2015 budget, which in large measure reflects some $350 million specifically directed to research into Alzheimer’s disease.

New pay line for Alzheimer's awards

We will be posting a new pay line for Alzheimer’s research, and I want to alert you to two important facts around it.