An update: NIH research funding for palliative medicine 2006 to 2010

Abstract

Background: Palliative care clinical and educational programs are expanding to meet the needs of seriously ill patients and their families. Multiple reports call for an enhanced palliative care evidence base.

Objective: To examine current National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of palliative medicine research and changes since our 2008 report.

Methods: We sought to identify NIH funding of palliative medicine from 2006 to 2010 in two stages. First, we searched the NIH grants database RePorter for grants with key words "palliative care," "end-of-life care," "hospice," and "end of life." Second, we identified palliative care researchers likely to have secured NIH funding using three strategies: (1) We abstracted the first and last authors' names from original investigations published in major palliative medicine journals from 2008 to 2010; (2) we abstracted these names from a PubMed generated list of all original articles published in major medicine, nursing, and subspecialty journals using the above key words Medical Subject Headings (MESH) terms "palliative care," "end-of-life care," "hospice," and "end of life;" and (3) we identified editorial board members of palliative medicine journals and key members of palliative medicine research initiatives. We crossmatched the pooled names against NIH grants funded from 2006 to 2010.

Results: The NIH RePorter search yielded 653 grants and the author search identified an additional 352 grants. Compared to 2001 to 2005, 589 (240%) more grants were NIH funded. The 391 grants categorized as relevant to palliative medicine represented 294 unique PIs, an increase of 185 (269%) NIH funded palliative medicine researchers. The NIH supported 21% of the 1253 original palliative medicine research articles identified. Compared to 2001 to 2005, the percentage of grants funded by institutes other than the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute for Nursing Research (NINR), and the National Institute of Aging (NIA) increased from 15% to 20% of all grants.

Conclusions: When compared to 2001-2005, more palliative medicine investigators received NIH funding; and research funding has improved. Nevertheless, additional initiatives to further support palliative care research are needed.

FIG. 1.

A comparison of NIH funding for palliative care research by grant type: 2001–2005 versus 2006–2010.

FIG. 2.

A comparison of NIH funding for palliative care research by research area: 2001–2005 versus 2006–2010.