NCCAM Director Foresees Slowdown in Alternative Medicine Grants
$89.1 million is 2001 budget the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to be given out for research grants. Compare this budget to NIH’s overall budget. Not much of a dent. So we have a small percentage of money going to CAM research and now reduced approval of incoming grants. And mainstream medicine loves to comment on how there is no research on CAM therapies. That’s because there’s pennies for research compared to the money that the pharmaceuticals can produce for researching their products. But we do have, in some cases, thousands of years of experience….
(article) After an initial few years of budget growth and an increase in grant awards, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) will cut the number of new grants for fiscal 2001, center director Stephen Straus said on Monday. “We’re going to slow down the pace of new initiatives,” said Straus, whose center is a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Outlining the state of the NCCAM to the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine here, Straus explained that despite a generous increase in its budget for the fiscal year, which began on October 1, the center’s previous grant commitments mean that there will be less room for new awards. The NIH gave NCCAM $89.1 million for fiscal year 2001 compared to $68.3 million in 2000. In terms of awards, about 35% of the budget will go toward research grants, 23% to designated centers of excellence — which are organized to study specific disease states or categories — and 10% to training current providers and educating new providers. The remainder will be allocated toward administration and other initiatives. In 1999, the year NCCAM was founded, it was easy to award grants, said Straus, noting they were usually “low-hanging fruit” and of high caliber. Almost half of the 23 applications that year were awarded, he said. In fiscal year 2000, 31% of 144 applications were granted, which was in line with the overall NIH average that approved 26% of 33,000 applications in that fiscal year. This year, the NCCAM estimates it will receive 212 applications, but will likely support only 18%, partly because of budget constraints held over from funds granted in 1999 and 2000, but also because of quality concerns, Straus said.