NIH Funding for Surgeon-Scientists in the US: What Is the Current Status?

Abstract

Background: Recent literature suggests that the future of surgeon-scientists in the US has been threatened for the past several decades. However, we documented an overall increase in NIH funding for surgeon-scientists, as well as the number of NIH-funded surgeons, from 2010 to 2020.

Study design: NIH-funded principal investigators (PIs) were identified for June 2010 and June 2020 using the NIH internal data platform iSearch Grants (version 2.4). Biographical sketches were searched for key terms to identify surgeon-scientists. Grant research types and total grant costs were collected. American Association of Medical Colleges data were used to determine total surgeon and physician populations. Bivariate chi-square analyses were performed using population totals and were corroborated using z-tests of population proportions using JMP (version 13.0.0). A 2-tailed p value <0.05 was considered significant.

Results: In June of 2020, a total of 1,031 surgeon-scientists held $872,456,710 in NIH funding. The percentage of funded surgeons significantly increased from 2010 (0.5%) to 2020 (0.7%) (p < 0.05), and the percentage of funded other physicians significantly decreased from 2.2% in 2010 to 1.6% in 2020 (p < 0.05). All surgeons sustained R grant funding at both time points (58% in 2020 and 60% in 2010), and specifically maintained basic science-focused R grants (73% in 2020 and 78% in 2010).

Conclusions: Our study found surgeon-scientists are increasing in number and NIH funding and are becoming more diverse in their research efforts, while maintaining a focus on basic science.

Figure 1.

Number of surgeons and grant cost distribution across surgical specialties. (A) 2020 surgeon distribution (n = 1,031, total = $872.5 million); (B) 2010 surgeon distribution (n = 715, total = $614.7 million).

Figure 2.

Number of surgeons and grant cost distribution across general surgery-trained subspecialties. (A) 2020 general surgeon subspecialty distribution (n = 258, total = $325.4 million); (B) 2010 general surgeon subspecialty distribution (n = 189, total = $203.3 million).

Figure 3.

Activity code mosaic plots. (A) 2020 distribution of 54 grant activity codes (no. of grants = 1,453); (B) 2010 distribution of 51 grant activity codes (no. of grants = 1,113).

Figure 4.

Distribution of grant categories among all surgeons and general surgery-trained surgeons in 2020 and 2010. (A) 2020 all surgeons and all grants (n = 1,031, no. of grants = 1,453); (B) 2020 general surgery-trained surgeons and all grants (n = 258, no. of grants = 372); (C) 2010 all surgeons and all grants (n = 714, no. of grants = 1,113); (D) 2010 general surgery-trained surgeons and all grants (n = 189, no. of grants = 298). A significant increase in the change in proportion of K grants and a significant decrease in the proportion of R grants compared withall other grants from 2010 to 2020 was observed for all surgeons (p < 0.05). Significant changes were not found in the proportions for general surgery-trained surgeons (p > 0.05)