For at least a century the United States has led the world in medical research. There has been more change in healthcare and how we think about healthcare in the last 25 years than the collective healthcare advances of all time before that. There are many reasons to believe that the next quarter century, and maybe even the next decade, will make the same kind of incredible progress. The United States should commit itself to making the most of that next generation of healthcare and maintain our position as the world’s premier leader in medical breakthroughs.
In 2015, I had the great opportunity to become the chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds the majority of the healthcare agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Republican-led United States House of Representatives that was elected in 1994 had pledged to double NIH funding in a decade, and they did. The commitment was fulfilled there and in almost every other area of the Contract with America.
The United States should commit itself to making the most of that next generation of healthcare and maintain our position as the world’s premier leader in medical breakthroughs.
However, in the 10 years which followed that decade of increased baseline funding for health research, there was little increase – not keeping up with inflation – and by 2015 the estimate was a loss of research buying power of about 22 percent.
Young researchers were leaving health research and taking their amazing brain power somewhere else. Promising research was moving forward at a pace that was way too slow. I decided this was unacceptable, and my top priority for the Appropriations Subcommittee that I led would be to make sure this funding was headed the right direction.
Congressman Tom Cole, who was Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee at the time, and I had a shared determination to do more for diseases – from Alzheimer’s that affects tens of millions to equally devastating diseases that are incredibly rare. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle also believed health research should be a priority and came on board to accept it as a top priority.
In 2003, NIH surprised the scientific world when it dramatically beat its own timeline for the human genome project and successfully mapped the human genome. How we think about and talk about healthcare changed dramatically. We began to use terms like personalized medicine, predictive medicine, precision medicine, stratified medicine, and next generation medicine.
We also began to focus on the limitless concept that each of us is individually different from all of the rest of us. No one else replicates you, and no other life experience replicates your life experience. With this new focus – from DNA to mental health – healthcare began to change.
And NIH continued to lead.
Exciting things were happening. NIH was encouraging research in every state and created an environment where that research ensured American leadership in healthcare advances around the world. In 2006, we had the first vaccine for cervical cancer, and that cancer now has a very different likely outcome. In 2009 and 2010, the vaccine for pneumonia was improved and advancements were developed around rapid testing for tuberculosis. In 2015, we saw major advances in CRISPR technology, and with it came the possibility to eliminate some chronic genetic diseases before they would even occur in an individual.
In 2017, NIH invested in the evolution of a new way to accelerate vaccine development against epidemic threats, and four years later mRNA made it possible to have a vaccine for COVID in nine months instead of the more traditional time period of at least three years. In 2021, research improved the oral polio vaccine, and it was deployed for emergency use to control outbreaks in over 21 countries.
When a country is first in health research, the people of that country benefit the most, but the economic opportunity of being first is also significant.
When a country is first in health research, the people of that country benefit the most, but the economic opportunity of being first is also significant. Just a few of the areas that will rapidly develop include CRISPR technology, microbial medicine, the AI applications in healthcare research, and analyzing healthcare data. Others will include injections for joints that could replace surgery, 3-D printed organs, miniaturization of healthcare monitoring devices, as well as patches and watches and other innovations that will monitor health.
Many Americans in the near future will be more likely to be contacted by their healthcare provider than they are to be calling their healthcare provider. Many more public private partnerships will occur in healthcare as these new technologies develop.
In this quickly changing world of healthcare, who leads will make a big difference. The answer to this challenge should be “America First.”
Roy Blunt served in both the U.S. House of Representatives (1997-2011) and the U.S. Senate (2011-2023), where he was Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. He currently is the Chairman of Leadership Strategies Advisory Services at HB Strategies, and serves as a Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and on the Tenet Healthcare Board of Directors.