On July 27, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee considered its version of the Fiscal Year 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill, which funds several agencies important to the Population Association of America and Association of Population Centers, including the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Health Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Institute of Education Sciences.
In a report accompanying the bill, the Committee included language (see below) praising population research activities and advances supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Eunice Kennedy Shiver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The language urges NIA and NICHD to sustain and enhance their support of surveys, centers, and research initiatives in Fiscal Year 2024 benefiting the population sciences. Several members of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee, including Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who chairs the subcommittee, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WA), the subcommittee’s ranking Republican member, and Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), supported its inclusion.
PAA officials who participated in the 2023 PAA Advocacy Day spoke with numerous congressional offices about the significance of the report language and encouraged its adoption. The report language is an important tool used by proponents of population research inside and outside of the Federal government to promote the field and stimulate support for essential scientific research and data collection and dissemination efforts.
“I am grateful to the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee for recognizing NIA and NICHD for their commitment to population research and for encouraging them to do more to advance the field,” said 2023 PAA President Dr. Lisa Berkman.
The House Appropriations Committee will consider its version of the FY 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill when Congress reconvenes in early September.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Population Research—The Committee commends NICHD for fulfilling its statutory authority by supporting a robust population research portfolio that includes population representative longitudinal surveys, research centers and networks, training programs, and grant mechanisms. Over the decades, these investments have yielded numerous scientific advances regarding the causes and consequences of population change on human and child development, maternal health, and the health and well-being of individuals across the life course. Most recently, the Baby’s First Years Study and Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Supplement Survey provided key insights into the impact of COVID mitigation strategies and economic relief measures on infant and child development. The Committee encourages NICHD to enhance its support of these and its other large-scale longitudinal surveys to help, among other things, elucidate the pandemic’s impacts on child and adolescent development. In addition, the Committee commends NICHD for supporting initiatives that facilitate collaborations and resource sharing between the Population Dynamics Research Centers and outside institutions and for funding the innovative Data Sharing for Demographic Research data repository, which makes high-quality demographic data widely available to the scientific research community.
National Institute on Aging
Population Research—NIA supports a rigorous population aging research portfolio that includes research grants, centers, networks, and population representative longitudinal surveys examining how demographic, social, and economic factors impact the health and well-being of older adults over the life course. The Committee is pleased to learn that in fiscal year 2024 NIA will be renewing several transdisciplinary research networks devoted to studying issues such as rural aging, psychosocial stress measurement, and social genomics. The Committee encourages the NIA to stimulate additional research projects addressing high priority areas such as rising midlife mortality rates, socioeconomic disparities, and the unique impacts of climate change on older individuals. Further, the Committee urges the Institute to explore how multidisciplinary nationally representative studies, such as the Health and Retirement Study, can improve the representation of Asian American subpopulations.