The US National Institutes of Health is lowering the maximum \u201cindirect cost rate\u201d that research institutions can charge the government, the agency said late Friday \u2013 a move that scientists said could be devastating for the nation\u2019s position as a research leader. <\/p>\n
The average NIH grant to an institution has typically had about 30% earmarked for infrastructure costs such as facilities, maintenance and security; some institutions charged up to 60% or more. The new NIH policy will cap that indirect cost rate at 15%, effective immediately. <\/p>\n
\u201cNIH spent more than $35 Billion in Fiscal Year 2023 on almost 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions,\u201d the agency said in its announcement. \u201cOf this funding, approximately $26 billion went to direct costs for research, while $9 billion was allocated to overhead through NIH\u2019s indirect cost rate.\u201d <\/p>\n
The agency said the move would more closely align government-funded indirect costs with the rates paid by private foundations. The Gates Foundation, for example, pays a 10% rate for indirect costs, while the Carnegie Corporation and John Templeton Foundation each pay 15% of indirect costs for research. <\/p>\n
But researchers said the new policy would kneecap the nation\u2019s status as a global leader. <\/p>\n
\u201cResearch is not just about having the scientists and lab equipment. It\u2019s about ensuring that the institution has a support system in place,\u201d Dr. Harlan Krumholz, the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, said in a video on the Inside Medicine newsletter. \u201cWithout these overhead expenses being covered, research institutions will struggle to maintain the very research infrastructure that enables groundbreaking medical advances.\u201d <\/p>\n
Institutions will have to absorb these costs themselves, Krumholz said, or cut back on their work. \u201cThere\u2019s certainly opportunities to streamline operations, reduce unnecessary overhead, make research funding more transparent and effective, but cutting the indirect rate so abruptly, so drastically, without sufficient safeguards, will threaten the foundational infrastructure that supports our research capacity.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dr. Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington, noted on social media that the new policy \u201cmeans cutting one of the most important sources of university funding nationwide by 75% or more.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cFor a large university, this creates a sudden and catastrophic shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars against already budgeted funds,\u201d he said in a post on Bluesky. <\/p>\n
Dr. Theodore Iwashyna, a professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine and of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, said the move was \u201ca disastrously bad idea.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd frankly, this means that the lives of my children and grandchildren \u2013 and maybe yours \u2013 will be shorter and sicker, because discoveries will not be made. It means the NIH research that has been the backbone of the high-tech health economy will be gutted, reducing their economic opportunities.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute from 2017 to 2022, predicted that universities across the country will move swiftly to challenge the new policy but said he agreed with the NIH that a re-evaluation of indirect costs is needed. <\/p>\n
US Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said the abruptly lowered indirect cost rate is illegal under the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis funding helps produce breakthroughs that change patients\u2019 lives, prepare us for pandemics and other global health threats, and ensure the U.S. continues to be the global leader in biomedical research,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cAfter a global pandemic that brought the world economy to a grinding halt and cost more than one million American lives, it\u2019s unthinkable that [President Donald] Trump and [Elon] Musk want to pull funding that will force public and private labs across America to shutter.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump proposed capping indirect costs in his previous administration, but the effort was unsuccessful. More recently, indirect cost reform was one of the proposals in Project 2025, a sweeping plan to overhaul the government that Trump disavowed during his campaign. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The US National Institutes of Health is lowering the maximum \u201cindirect cost rate\u201d that research institutions can charge the government, the agency said late Friday \u2013 a move that scientists said could be devastating for the nation\u2019s position as a research leader. The average NIH grant to an institution has typically had about 30% earmarked …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":442,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}