FASEB Updates NIH Funding Trends Resource

By: Tianlu Ma
Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Each year, FASEB releases “National Institutes of Health (NIH) Appropriations & Grant Trends,” a comprehensive analysis of the most currently available data on the agency’s funding levels, grant awards, and application success rates.

NIH funds are distributed across the U.S. and the world to support critical biomedical research activities and the development of the scientific workforce. Therefore, it is important to track NIH funding trends to ensure sufficient financial support for these core activities. In previous iterations of this analysis, FASEB tracked NIH funding trends starting in 1995. However, to remain consistent with available NIH funding data and better reflect the current funding environment, the latest version of this resource focuses on the past decade of funding, fiscal years (FYs) 2010 through 2020.

The analysis includes explanatory text highlighting major findings, as well as definitions of commonly used terms. Analyses were informed by data from the NIH RePORTER database. FY 2021 budget recommendations from the Trump Administration are also incorporated into the analysis.

Themes covered in the resource include:

• NIH Appropriations from 2010 – 2020
• NIH Grant Funding Trends
• NIH Grant Application Success and Funding Rates
• Cumulative Changes in NIH Appropriations and Applications since 2010

This resource aims to make NIH appropriations and grant trends more accessible to policymakers, scientists, and legislators. FASEB encourages scientists and science advocates to use individual slides or the entire set as part of district meetings, laboratory visits, science cafes, and other public outreach events.