Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
House Energy and Commerce Republicans are proposing a sweeping reorganization of NIH that would remove the agency's authority over "gain-of-function" research and reduce the number of institutes from 27 to 15.
Why it matters: It's the most detailed roadmap of how GOP lawmakers would transform NIH, which has been under scrutiny from both the Energy and Commerce committee and the COVID Select Subcommittee for its oversight of risky research on pathogens.
What's inside: The plan would streamline research areas and establish a congressionally mandated commission to oversee the NIH, along with a separate independent oversight entity to review, approve or reject high-risk research proposals.
- NIAID, a focus of partisan debates over COVID and the pandemic response that received $6.56 billion in FY24 funding, would be divided into a National Institute on Infectious Diseases with proposed funding of $3.3 billion and an institute on the immune system and arthritis.
- The plan also would establish new transparency requirements for reporting costs for any research grants that are issued.
- The proposal maintains the FY24 appropriations funding levels for the NIH and its centers, but reallocates money based on the new centers' structure.
- It proposes cutting funding for the ARPA-H program back to its original authorization level and redistributing the remainder to other centers.
What they're saying: Republican leaders wrote in a Stat op-ed that House spending bills would reflect some of the proposed reforms as part of its fiscal year 2025 appropriations process.
