Proposed Labor-HHS funding bill could put endocrine research, disease prevention, and treatment at risk

Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Jul 21 2023

The Endocrine Society opposes severe funding cuts proposed in the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) funding bill that would put life-saving endocrine research, disease prevention, and treatment at risk.

The House Appropriations Committee is planning to mark up the Labor-HHS funding bill before Congress leaves for its August recess.

The proposed funding levels in the Labor-HHS bill would harm America's public health infrastructure and restrict research investments needed to develop next-generation cures. Cutting funding will reduce or eliminate services that are essential to protecting the nation's health.

The Society is the largest professional organization for researchers who study and clinicians who treat endocrine conditions, including diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, thyroid conditions, cancer, and reproductive conditions. In the field of endocrinology, the proposed cuts would:

• Reduce or eliminate successful diabetes prevention programs that protect vulnerable Americans.
• Slash basic and clinical research to discover new treatments and cures for endocrine diseases, including cancer, obesity, and infertility.
• Make competitive grant funding even more difficult to attain, which will discourage early career researchers from joining the biomedical research pipeline, shrink the workforce, and have impacts on health research for decades to come.

The proposed L-HHS appropriations bill represents a 28% cut below Fiscal Year 2023 levels and includes:

• A 14% cut to the Department of Health and Human Services.
• A nearly $4 billion cut for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and deep cuts for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).
• Devastating cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Endocrine Society calls on Congress to build on the investments made in the FY 2023 L-HHS funding bill and reject the proposed FY 2024 bill. Cutting funding to health programs puts the health and well-being of the patients our members treat and all Americans at risk. It threatens the ability to conduct lifesaving endocrine research, limits endocrinologists' ability to provide preventive care, and it damages the health care and research workforce.