On February 13th, Congress passed a $787 billion economic recovery package. President Obama signed it into law on February 17th.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) includes funding for the following programs of interest to academic health centers:

• $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including $1 billion for construction and renovation of extramural research facilities and $300 million for shared instrumentation
• $191 million to restore Medicare capital indirect medical education payments by retroactively reversing this year's 50 percent cut to teaching hospital payments
• $500 million to the Health Resources and Services Administration for health professions workforce development through scholarships, loan repayment and grants
• $700 million to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for comparative effectiveness research ($400 million of that funding is to be transferred to the NIH to conduct or support such research)
• $400 million to support comparative effectiveness research at the discretion of the Secretary of Health and Human Services
• $2.5 billion for the National Science Foundation for research and related activities

At present, MUSC’s Office of Research Development is enhancing web-based resources and stepping up the level of communications to help individuals learn about and respond to special opportunities that arise with respect to economic stimulus funding. Current emphasis is on NIH, where the immediate opportunities are in Shared Instrumentation Grants (due March 23), High End Instrumentation Grants (anticipated accelerated due date in May), and new Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) anticipated for alterations/renovations and possibly new construction.  ORD is encouraging the development of "distributed teams" for the purpose of coordinating and submitting various Shared Instrumentation Grant applications, and will support these efforts by preparing bio sketches, tables of other support, institutional information and other elements as requested.  

For additional information regarding the stimulus package, please go to MUSC’s Research Resources Portal at http://research.musc.edu/researchresources.html. For additional information on Shared Instrumentation Grants – including tips on preparing a Shared Instrumentation grant, a model SIG research plan, and an outline for electronic submission – please go to http://research.musc.edu/ord/SIG.html.

Source: AAMC STAT, February 16, 2009.