Washington, DC – Congresswomen Jackie Speier (CA-14) and Anna G. Eshoo (CA-18) sent a letter today to House leadership, signed by 15 additional Members, asking that the next coronavirus relief package include $26 billion in supplemental appropriations for research institutions impacted by closed labs and limited activities in light of the coronavirus outbreak. The funds would allow the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Defense Science and Technology Programs, among other major research agencies, to fund a four-month cost extension of federal grants. It would also help support America’s best and brightest research workforce – including graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and principal investigators – and future developments and cures in the fight against cancer, chronic diseases, and pandemics like COVID-19.

The Members’ letter states, “Like most businesses across the country, research labs have experienced closures, slowdowns, and harm to their workforce and capabilities. While some research labs are repurposing their efforts for the COVID-19 fight or attempting to telework, many others have seen their federally funded research delayed, halted, or interrupted. This translates to holes in critical data collection, the loss of work and pay for staff scientists and other technical workers, graduate students unable to complete their degrees, and the need for extended post-doctoral work. It also means that groundbreaking and often life-saving research will inevitably suffer.

For example, the University of California, San Francisco, is working with 80 universities and sites on the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) NIH initiative, which supports longitudinal studies to identify and intervene in factors that lead to preterm birth, obesity, asthma, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. ECHO is dependent on recruiting pregnant women and following their children. Understandably, much of this work, including collecting valuable information and specimen samples, and recruiting new participants, has had to stop.

Similarly, investigators at Stanford University involved in the multisite NIH Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) have ceased their collection of critical measurements of brain and biology in affected and unaffected people due to the vulnerability of the elderly adults who participate in these studies at sixty sites across the country. Many NIH clinical trials for non-life-threatening disorders have also been suspended, particularly those with immunocompromised participants.”

The $26 billion in supplemental appropriations would be used specifically to cover requests for research grant and contract supplements, such as cost extensions, due to COVID-19 related impacts, including salary support; for emergency relief to sustain research support personnel and base operating costs for core research facilities and user-funded research services; and to fund additional graduate student and postdoc fellowships, traineeships, and research assistantships.

A copy of the letter is attached to this press release.

 

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