HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health on February 26th, to highlight a number of programs within the HHS FY 2016 budget http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/examining-fy-2016-hhs-budget.
One of the major concerns is the nation’s investment in health centers since the centers serve the most vulnerable population while reducing the use of costlier care through emergency departments and hospitals.
The budget request includes $4.2 billion for health centers, including $2.7 billion in mandatory resources to serve about 28.6 million patients in FY 2016 at more than 9,000 sites in medically underserved communities.
As explained by Secretary Burwell, “The Administration is working to create transparency of cost and quality information to bring electronic health information to the point-of-care. To improve communication and enhance care coordination, the FY 2016 budget includes an investment for $92 million to support the adoption, interoperability, and meaningful use of electronic health records.
The Budget includes $215 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative, a new cross department effort to focus on developing treatments, diagnostics, and prevention strategies tailored to the genetic characteristics of individual patients.
This effort includes $200 million for NIH to launch a national research cohort of a million or more Americans who volunteer to share their information. This information includes genetic, clinical, and other data to improve research as well as investing in expanding current cancer genomics research and using funds to initiate new studies on how a tumor’s DNA can inform prognosis and treatment choices.
The Budget also includes $31.3 billion for NIH to advance basic biomedical and behavioral research, harness data and technology for real-world health outcomes, and to prepare a diverse biomedical research workforce.
NIH estimates that $638 million on Alzheimer’s research will be available to drive progress on recent advances in the understanding of the genetics and biology of the disease, including data on drugs currently in clinical trials and/or drugs that are still in the pipeline.
To meet the needs in domestic and international public health preparedness, $975 million is included in the budget with an increase of $12 million to implement the Global Health Security Agenda. This will enable countries to detect and respond to potential disease outbreaks or public health emergencies to prevent the spread of disease across borders.
The Budget supports CDC’s critical infrastructure and cross-cutting research to facilitate rapid response to public health emergencies and other public health threats, such as the ongoing measles outbreak. CDC also directs public health response efforts, detects sources of disease outbreaks, and develops tests to rapidly detect biological, chemical, and radiological agents.
More than $280 million in funding at CDC will improve antibiotic stewardship, outbreak surveillance, antibiotic use resistance monitoring and research and development related to combating antibiotic resistance.
The Budget includes more than $650 million across NIH and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to significantly expand investments in developing antibacterial and new rapid diagnostics.