Advancing Science to Improve Health and Stimulate the Economy
• A message from Barbara Alving, M.D., adapted from the latest issue of the NCRR Reporter.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 provides $10.4 billion to NIH for two years. The funds are boosting existing health research programs and creating new ones, speeding advances in science and medicine.
They also are breathing new life into our economy. New grants create or preserve jobs for lab technicians, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants, students — even architects and construction workers. The resulting research may lead to new preventions, treatments and cures for diseases. Industry also can translate findings into new medical devices or instruments, which in turn lead to jobs in manufacturing and marketing.
NCRR is administering more than $1.6 billion in ARRA grants in several areas. As referenced in the ARRA legislation, NCRR received $1 billion for construction, repair and renovation of research facilities and $300 million for shared instrumentation and other research equipment. Additionally, NIH allocated $310 million to NCRR in support of other biomedical research priorities.
We expect that the positive impact of this support for institutions and researchers — as well as for other sectors of the economy — will be extraordinary, but it will take some time before we can gauge its full extent. The cover story in the most recent issue of the NCRR Reporter, which highlights several institutions that received NCRR's construction and instrumentation grants in the past, provides a glimpse of what the future may hold thanks to ARRA funding.
Previous funding at the University of Puerto Rico, for example, resulted in construction of the first building in the commonwealth dedicated solely to research. At the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, construction of a new facility helped fill a gap in the field of neuroimaging. The New York Structural Biology Center in New York City, a facility essential to the work of structural biologists in the region, leveraged NCRR funding to expand its size and capabilities.
Research facilities would be of little value to scientists without the advanced instruments, lab equipment, high-powered computers and other resources they house. NCRR-funded high-end and shared instrumentation grants provide thousands of researchers with the cutting-edge equipment they need to peer into the inner workings of molecules, cells, tissues and whole organisms to unravel disease processes.
Today as in the past, NCRR grants can help create jobs, stimulate the economy and, most importantly, advance scientific discoveries to improve human health.
Sincerely,
Barbara M. Alving, M.D.
Director, NCRR
