January 14, 2026

Dear Chair Collins, Chairman Cole, Vice Chair Murray, and Ranking Member DeLauro:

We, the undersigned organizations, represent millions of Americans living with chronic and acute diseases – people whose lives depend on improved treatments and the discovery of cures. We are writing to strongly urge you and your colleagues to adopt the Senate’s restrictions on advance funding of multi-year research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It saves the taxpayers no dollars, but costs them cures.

As you know, today, NIH primarily funds competitively selected medical research proposals using incremental payments. For example, if a selected research project costs a total $2 million dollars and will take four years to complete, NIH allocates $500,000 to the project each year for four consecutive years. This process is vastly superior to a process that outlays the full $2 million

dollars in the very first year of a new research proposal. In this example, incremental funding enables NIH to support four competitively selected, promising research proposals at $500,000 each instead of prepaying for just one, four-year research project. The difference in these two approaches is enormously important for people waiting on cures and new treatments.

Incremental funding speeds the arrival of new cures and treatments by putting more research “oars” in the water simultaneously. Moving to a process where multi-year research projects are given 100% of their funding in their very first year will result in a cut by more than half of promising research proposals being funded, fewer breakthroughs being achieved, and weakened accountability and oversight of federal investments. In 2024, NIH only funded less than one in five research proposals submitted by scientists nationwide, and that success rate dropped last year. Without limits on this accounting method, the success rate will drop even further.

As you work through the final negotiations on the FY2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (Labor HHS) bill, we urge you to preserve the bipartisan language included in the Senate’s Labor HHS bill for urgently needed medical research. It is imperative for delivering the treatments, technologies, and cures that the American people urgently need and deserve.

Sincerely,

• The Alliance for Aging Research

• ALS Association

• ALS Network

• ALS United

• American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

• American Diabetes Association

• American Lung Association

• Arthritis Foundation

• The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration

• Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

• Autoimmune Association

• Blood Cancer United (formerly The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society)

• Breakthrough T1D (formerly JDRF)

• Cancer Nation

• CaringKind, The Heart of Alzheimer's Caregiving

• Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation

• Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

• Epilepsy Foundation of America

• Friends of Cancer Research

• GO2 for Lung Cancer

• LEAD Coalition (Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer’s Disease)

• Lewy Body Dementia Association

• Lupus Foundation of America

• Lupus Research Alliance

• The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

• The Myositis Association

• National Consumers League

• National Patient Advocate Foundation

• Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance

• Parkinson's Foundation

• Susan G. Komen

• UsAgainstAlzheimer’s

• Voices of Alzheimer’s