The 10 largest public and philanthropic funders of health research in the world: what they fund and how they distribute their funds

Viergever, Roderik F.; Hendriks, Thom C. C.

doi:10.1186/s12961-015-0074-z

Table 4 Overview of funding distribution mechanisms of the 10 largest funding organizations of health research globally (in million 2013 US $)

From: The 10 largest public and philanthropic funders of health research in the world: what they fund and how they distribute their funds

	1	2	2a	2b	3	4	5	5a	6	7	8	9	10
Funding organization	NIH	EC – total	EC – FP7 health	EC – ERC	MRC	Inserm^b	US DoD – total	US DoD – CDMRP	Wellcome Trust^a	CIHR	NHMRC	HHMI	DFG
Country	USA	EU	EU	EU	GBR	FRA	USA	USA	GBR	CAN	AUS	USA	DEU
Total health research funding	26,081.3	3717.7	1181.7	783.4	1321.5	1041.2	1017.7	409.0	909.1	883.6	777.6	752.0	630.6
Year	2013	2013	2013	2013	2013	2013	2013	2012	2013	2012	2013	2013	2012
Intramural vs. extramural	Largely extramural	NA	Extramural	Extramural	Mixed	Intramural	NA	Largely extramural	Largely extramural	Extramural	Extramural	Largely extramural^c	Extramural
Mechanism for extramural funding	Largely untargeted (but earmarked for broad areas), with smaller targeted and organizational funding streams	NA	Targeted, issuing calls under prioritized health research topics	Untargeted	Mixed approach, with large streams for untargeted (but earmarked for broad areas), targeted and organizational funding^d	–	NA	Largely targeted, issuing calls under prioritized health research topics, with a smaller untargeted funding stream	Largely untargeted, with a smaller targeted funding stream	Largely untargeted, with a smaller targeted funding stream	Largely untargeted, with smaller organizational and targeted funding streams	Untargeted	Mixed approach, with large streams for organizational and untargeted funding and a smaller targeted funding stream
Intramural funding	3283	0	0	0	513	1041	–	16	155	0	0	100	0
Extramural funding	22,799	3718	1182	783	809	0	–	393	754	884	778	652	631^e
Project grants	18,341	–	1182	783	519	0	–	368	–	692	478	0	271
Untargeted	0	–	0	783	0	0	–	0	–	464	468	0	217
Untargeted, earmarked for broad areas	11,708	–	0	0	220^f	0	–	0	–	0	0	0	0
Targeted	3738	–	1182	0	221^f	0	–	299	–	228	0	0	52
Highly targeted	2895	–	0	0	0	0	–	69	–	0	10	0	2
‘People grants’	615	–	0	0	98	0	–	25	–	105	156	652	14
All funding to organizations	2709	–	0	0	163	0	–	0	–	4	143	0	254
Other research^g	1134	–	0	0	28	0	–	0	–	83	0	0	1
Research training/science education^h	768	–	0	0	0	0	–	26	–	64	0	80	38

All data are from publicly available documents, except for CDMRP and DFG, for which data were received through personal communication, and for CIHR for which the data were largely publicly available but were supplemented through personal communication
Zero’s (“0”) indicates an amount of zero million in funding; dashes (“–”) indicate that no information on the amount of funding was available; NA indicates that we did not extract information for overarching funding organizations (only for the more specific organization(s) next to it). Some of the funders we identified (the EC and the US DoD) consisted of several sub-organizations that distributed the research funding in different ways, in which case we compiled total funding for the organization as a whole, but analysed the distribution mechanisms of the largest sub-organization(s)
NIH, National Institutes Of Health; EC, European Commission; FP7 health, FP7-cooperation programme – Health Theme; ERC, European Research Council; US DoD, United States Department Of Defense; CDMRP, Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program; MRC, Medical Research Council; Inserm, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale; CIHR, Canadian Institutes Of Health Research; NHMRC, National Health and Medical Research Council; HHMI, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
^aThe annual expenditures for the Wellcome Trust are a slight overestimation for health research spending. Under medical humanities and engagement, various non-research grants are provided as well as other activities (e.g. running the Wellcome library), but these were not reported on separately, so are included under ‘Research’
^bInserm funds research almost exclusively intramurally. However, Inserm does provide for some extramural funding. We were not able to find any information about the proportion of funding by Inserm that is distributed extramurally, but it is likely very small, so we classified all of Inserm’s funding as intramural. Historical research into Inserm’s expenditures put the organization’s intramural/extramural proportions of distributed funds at 10/90 [23]
^cTechnically, HHMI funds research 100% intramurally because it employs its own researchers. However, its researchers are mostly located at external research institutes or universities (with the exception of HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus), and therefore, for this table, we classified HHMI’s funding distribution mechanism as largely extramural. The 100 million dollar for intramural funding is based on an annual budget estimate from 2010 for the Janelia Research Campus by HHMI itself and is not a precise number
^dThe MRC has both untargeted and targeted funding streams; most are untargeted (‘response-mode’ in the MRC’s description). However, untargeted funding at the MRC is not fully untargeted, the Research Boards that make funding decisions take into account broader strategic considerations, priorities, portfolio balance, and issue ‘highlight notices’ for issues that are of especial importance to the MRC
^eThe data for DFG do not add up because multiple sources were used (public reporting and personal communication). The total amount of funding includes overhead costs for projects, while amount for various research categories are exclusive of overhead costs
^fFunding distribution figures of MRC are based on data provided in the annual report 2013/2014 of the MRC United Kingdom. All figures are based on actual expenditures; however, targeted and untargeted funding are based on commitments made, and therefore do not add up to total Project funding
^g‘Other research’ included ‘other research’ categories in funding organizations’ reports and funds for research communication when specified separately
^hTraining support and research education were not included in the overall amount for health research expenditures, but because there can be an overlap between these activities and research activities, particularly in the case of post-doctoral fellowships, we collected expenditures toward research education and training separately
For definitions of terms in this table (e.g. ‘people grants’ or ‘untargeted’/‘targeted’/‘highly targeted’) see Additional file 1

Back to article page

ISSN: 1478-4505

Contact us

Submission enquiries: Access here and click Contact Us
General enquiries: info@biomedcentral.com

Health Research Policy and Systems

Contact us