Did they miss the memo? Follow up
I sent a note to the reporter who wrote the story on the KU Medical Center expansion; here is his reply:
Geoff,
Thank you for your note, and for passing along the Science magazine article. I have written on this topic before as I increasingly am hearing from researchers about the intensifying competition for federal grants. So far, Kansas researchers appear to be defying the national trends. NIH funding at the KU Medical center rose 22% last year, which means, a top medical center official said today, that Kansas researchers are taking federal money away from labs in other states.
The university's ability to maintain this success with a vastly expanded program will be a very important issue to consider as the community is asked to support the endeavor. I will strive to draw more attention to the issue.
Best regards, Jason
Jason Gertzen The Kansas City Star
I was impressed by the recent growth in the KU Medical Center's funding, so I decided to dig in a bit. While I was up at NBER earlier this spring, I wrote some code to parse all the NIH's data on awards. Here's what I found about the University of Kansas Medical Center (hope I have the right place - I didn't see a Kansas University Medical Center):
The medical center did have impressive growth from 2005 to 2006 (11%). However, in the years before that, it stayed the same (2004-2005), fell by 6% (2003-2004), rose by 2%, etc. There has been growth over time, but the rate has fluctuated considerably from year to year. It's quite possible that the 11% gain last year was just random variation. (I'm not sure of the reason for the discrepancy between the growth rate Jason cites and what the NIH numbers show - the NIH data sets I'm using may be incomplete)
Over the last 5 years, the medical center's NIH funding grew by 15% overall, from $35M to $40M. That sounds impressive until you consider that total NIH grants grew by 26% over the same time period. To double their funding in the next 5 years, the medical center's funding will have to grow by 15% per year, roughly 5 times the current rate. Part of their growth over the last 5 years came from the tail end of the NIH's budget doubling. This time around, that boost won't be there. I'm sure the additional people will help; no doubt the new hires will be under tremendous pressure to bring in money.
I wish them well.
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on Wed, Jun 20, 09:06AM
You might need to look at state and municipal funding, bond issues, etc. to get the full picture. Building up a medical center's about a lot more than basic research funding.
The Kansas City Business Journal's probably a good place to look, eg http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2007/06/18/daily18.html
I learned something today-- searching at one of these <wherever> Business Journals finds articles from all of the bizjournals around the country. Searching "medical center" gets you a zillion things: UNM is on the grow; UT Galveston moving up in the NIH rankings, Oregon Health Sciences seeking more students and building satellite campuses...
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on Wed, Jun 20, 02:06PM
Interesting suggestion about the local business journals, Vic.
It does look like the city and state will be ponying up a good chunk of cash together with local foundations. If I remember correctly, in one of his Science pieces, Zerhouni blamed ambitious state and local governments for part of the expansion of R01 applications that is causing the NIH so much grief at the moment.
Designation as a national cancer center should help a lot with funding. But quadrupling their funding seems incredibly ambitious given the level of competition right now and the relatively grim outlook for future NIH funding. That anticipated $350 million per year has to be a big chunk of their projected annual operating costs. If that fails to come through, it could be pretty ugly for all concerned.
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