SNMMI & Partners Urge Congress to Support Medical Research in Infrastructure Legislation

May 20, 2021

Yesterday, SNMMI and 228 other organizations signed a letter coordinated by the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research thanking the 117th Congress for its support of medical research. As Congress considers legislation to strengthen the nation’s infrastructure and bolster economic recovery, the signatories urged Congress to include investments in the infrastructure underpinning the medical research enterprise.

"Like the physical roads and bridges that we traditionally consider infrastructure, our nation’s medical research facilities and research personnel are critical infrastructure that are essential to improve our health and prosperity," the letter stated. SNMMI and the signing organizations offered appreciation for the supplemental funding directed to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the past year for COVID-19 research. However, they added, "to fully optimize the nation’s potential to advance new therapeutics, diagnostics, preventive interventions, and cures, ... we call to your attention additional priorities that remain in urgent need of action through one-time emergency investments."

To enable NIH to mitigate pandemic-related disruptions without forgoing promising new science, the signatories support one-time emergency funding for federal research agencies as outlined in the bipartisan Research Investment to Spark the Economy (RISE) Act (H.R. 869/S. 289), including $10 billion for NIH.

Earlier in March 2021, SNMMI—along with the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA), American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT), Association for Quality Imaging (AQI), and Center for Diagnostic Imaging (CDI)—sent a letter commending Reps. DeGette and Upton on the introduction of the the RISE Act.