NIH Created 3,000 Jobs in Utah Last Year, Study Finds

Jun 18, 2008 by Jeff Robinson

(KCPW News) A new report from healthcare advocacy group Families USA claims Utah's economy gained more than $350 million dollars in business activity last year because of grants from the National Institutes of Health, and calls on Congress to increase NIH funding at a faster rate. Executive Director Ron Pollack says NIH funding has effectively gone down 13 percent in the last five years because of inflation.

"This funding decline hurts our nation's efforts to improve health care here and across the globe, and it hurts efforts to lure and keep scientists that will produce tomorrow's medical breakthroughs," said Pollack. "In turn, these cutbacks, in real dollars, result in harm to state economies."

The NIH awarded nearly $23 billion dollars in research grants in 2007. Utah received more than $150 million dollars. The report estimates that grant created 3,000 jobs in the state.

Families USA partially blames the Bush Administration for not making NIH funding a priority. The organization says change may be on the way, but not quick, according to Global Health Initiative Director Dee Mahan.

"Within Congress, right now we're in the appropriations cycle, and there is an effort to possibly restore a little bit of the funding," she said, "But certainly where we might in the best-case scenario end up after this year would still leave us far behind where we need to be for NIH funding to have even kept up with biomedical inflation over the past several years."

Check out the report online.

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