On Wednesday, Sept. 18, the College is urging members to participate in a Rally for Medical Research Hill Day by sending letters to members of Congress urging them to invest in the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

It’s no secret that federal funding for medical research is in serious jeopardy. NIH funding has remained essentially flat since 2003. When factoring in the rate of biomedical inflation, the agency has lost approximately $6 billion, or 20 percent, in purchasing power, hindering its ability to fund life-saving research at a sustained pace. To make matters worse, the recent sequestration slashed the NIH budget by roughly $1.5 billion, or a little more than 5 percent. According to NIH Director Francis Collins, unless the Budget Control Act is replaced, the NIH will lose $19 billion in funding by 2021.

For cardiovascular medicine, in particular, these cuts are part of what can only be called a “perfect storm” of converging factors that are slowing the pace of advances in medical science and health care delivery, but limiting opportunities for the next generation of cardiologists, researchers and other health care professionals, at a time when we clearly need them the most.

By 2030, it’s predicted that more than 40 percent of adult Americans will have some form of cardiovascular disease. In addition, current projections indicate a 25 percent increase in the prevalence of both heart failure and stroke over the next 20 years. To make matters more complicated, an additional 30 million Americans will be seeking health care services beginning as early as next year as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Without adequate funding for medical research we can’t hope to meet these challenges head on. The NIH is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world and it has been a driving force behind many decades of advances that have improved the health of people in every corner of America. We stand to lose ground on the progress we have made to date if budget cuts continue.

 What can we do? On Sept. 18 the ACC is asking members to stand with the more than 150 national organizations and institutions participating in the Rally for Medical Research and call on our nation’s lawmakers to invest funding for medical research. (An action alert and other resources, including sample Tweets, will be posted on the Rally website at on the day of the event.) For those ACC members attending the ACC’s Legislative Conference from Sept 22-24, we have additional opportunities to discuss this issue (along with other key topics) during our meetings with lawmakers.

We must act now and we must act together, both as a profession and as part of the broader medical community. Our lawmakers need to hear from us about the very real impacts of continued cuts to the states and communities they represent. Let’s rally!

Funding for medical research is only one element of the perfect storm facing the house of medicine. Looming cuts in support for Graduate Medical Education also pose significant threats to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. I, along with ACC President-Elect Patrick O’Gara, MD, FACC, and ACC Academic Section Advisory Council Co-Chairs Joseph A. Hill, MD, PhD, FACC, and Marvin A. Konstam, MD, FACC, discuss the GME issue in an upcoming President’s Message in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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