Letter supporting funding for the National Institutes of child health and development at NIH

Dear Chairs Capito and Aderholt and Ranking Members Baldwin and DeLauro:

The undersigned organizations are members of the Friends of NICHD, a coalition of professional organizations, scientific societies, and patient advocacy groups with a vested interest in promoting and sustaining the vital research activities of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

The Friends of NICHD are grateful for the strong, bipartisan support your subcommittees have given the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NICHD. Thanks to your leadership, NIH has received significant increases in funding in recent years. The Friends of NICHD urge you to continue to support NIH and NICHD in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026. Our coalition has endorsed the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research FY 2026 funding recommendation, which would provide the NIH with $51.3 billion in funding. Aligned with this request, we call for a proportionate increase to NICHD, bringing its funding to $1.891 billion in FY 2026. We further request that NICHD’s base budget in FY 2026 grow at the same rate as the NIH’s base budget overall in FY 2026 spending legislation.

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