.National Institutes of Health Funding to US Medical Schools in 2007 

For data on 2006 awards, click here. 

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It is difficult, if not impossible, to summarize accurately department, medical school, and university allocations in brief tables. For example, one medical school (Mayo Clinic) has more than $170 million in NIH support but does not allocate this to any department. The NIH combines radiation and diagnostic oncology into a single category, whereas these entities may represent separate departments. Moreover, a combined department (e.g., Department of Physiology and Pharmacology) will appear in only one category and skew the rankings for that department. If a university has NIH funded Departments of Anatomy in the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Veterinary Medicine, the value included in the current tables will reflect the total university allocation and not just that of the School of Medicine.

There are additional considerations. Bona fide medical school faculty may have their grants credited to hospitals or research institutes leading to an underestimate of funding to medical school faculty. 

In contrast, some medical schools are credited  with grants to non-traditional medical school departments including  biology, chemistry, psychology, and physics. Funding to non-traditional medical school departments accounts for the disagreement in the bottom line for total medical school funding listed in Tables 1 and 2 (the latter  is the more accurate). 

The ≈ $11 billion awarded to medical schools accounts for nearly half of the $23 billion awarded in extramural NIH funding. However, data for R and D contracts for 2007, which historically account for about 10% of NIH extramural funding, are not yet available. Of the ≈ $2 billion in R and D contracts, less than $500 million has been awarded to Schools of Medicine. 

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