On June 1, the ACC submitted written testimony to the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee outlining the College’s Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) appropriations requests, some of which were carried over from requests made in FY18.

Building upon FY17 and FY18 funding boosts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the College urged Congress to appropriate the following funds toward agencies doing vital work in cardiovascular disease treatment and prevention: $39.3 billion for the NIH – with $3.6 billion allocated to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and $2.3 billion to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; and $160 million for the CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, $5 million for the CDC’s Million Hearts program, $7 million for CDC congenital heart research, $37 million for CDC’s WISEWOMAN program and $216.5 million for CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.

The testimony also thanked Congress for supporting medical innovation in the continued fight against cardiovascular disease and encouraged legislators to continue this important progress by ensuring future medical research advancements in FY19 and beyond.

“Stable funding for research, surveillance and healthy lifestyle promotion will not only save lives, but save health care costs in the long term,” the testimony reads. “Medical research nurtures economic growth by creating jobs and new technologies, which will produce billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid savings over the next decade.”

Keywords: ACC Advocacy, Medicaid, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U.S.), National Institutes of Health (U.S.), Medicare, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S., Academies and Institutes, Health Care Costs, Biomedical Research, Heart Diseases, Cardiovascular Diseases, Smoking, Stroke

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