In mid-March, the Biden administration kicked off the ceremonially start to the annual budget and appropriations process with the release for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 President’s Budget Request to Congress. The non-binding document serves to outline administration priorities as Congress works on corresponding spending bills. This year, the request outlines a reinvigoration of the Cancer Moonshot while calling for further funding for medical research and public heath programs (though skewing that request toward public health due to the fact that medical research continues to have strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill). A summary of key items from the FY 204 budget request to Congress is listed below.

• $11.6 billion in discretionary, Prevention and Public Health Fund, and Public Health Service Evaluation funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an increase of $2.4 billion over FY 2023.
• $48.6 billion program level for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $920 million over FY 2023. The NIH increase is applied unevenly among NIH Institutes and Centers, with many receiving no increase.
  • $3.24 billion for the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), level with FY 2023.
    • $425.96 million for the Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) program, level with FY 2023.
  • $525.14 million for the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), level with FY 2023.
    • $83.20 million for Research Centers at Minority Institutions (RCMIs), level with FY 2023.
  • $923.32 million for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), level with FY 2023.
    • $629.56 million for the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program, level with FY 2023 (line-item funding for CTSAs is requested through the budget request).
• $2.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an increase of $1 billion over FY 2023.
• $447 million for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an increase of $74 million over FY 2023.

Dane Christiansen, Washington Representative