The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is the nation’s principal health statistics agency. Housed within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it provides critical data on all aspects of public health and the health care system through data cooperatives and surveys that serve as a gold standard for data collection around the world. As you prepare the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill, the undersigned members of the Friends of NCHS urge you to protect NCHS’s budget from further cuts and provide the agency with $170 million in budget authority in FY 2018, $10 million more than FY 2017. #GPAC 2019#GPAC2018#LettersandComments#NIH#FederalFunding