Skip to main content

Table 5 Overview of funding provided by the 10 largest funders of health research globally to 20 selected health areas (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 US DoD – total US DoD – CDMRP Wellcome Trust CIHR NHMRC HHMI DFG
Country USA EU EU EU GBR FRA USA USA GBR CAN AUS USA DEU
Year 2013 – 2013 – 2009/2010 – – 2012 2009/2010 2012 2013 – –
Communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional disorders – – – – – – – – – – 179 – –
 Infectious diseases 4887 – 186 – 168 – – – 171 242 127 – –
  Lower respiratory infections 113 – – – – – – – – – 14 – –
  Diarrheal diseases – – – – – – – – – – 8 – –
  HIV/AIDS 2898 – – – – – – – – 46 12 – –
 Maternal disorders – – – – 30 – – – 14 – 32 – –
  Maternal haemorrhage – – – – – – – – – – – – –
 Neonatal disorders 486 – – – – – – – – – 19 – –
  Pre-term birth complications 198 – – – – – – – – – 15 – –
 Nutritional deficiencies – – – – – – – – – – 2 – –
  Protein deficiencies – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Non-communicable diseases – – – – – – – – – – – – –
 Cardiovascular and circulatory diseases 1964 – 82 – 50 – – 13 28 40 97 – –
  Ischemic heart disease 404 – – – – – – – – – 30 – –
 Neoplasms 5274 – 80 – 84 – – – 12 – 139 – –
  Trachea, bronchus, lung cancer 208 – – – – – – – – – 6 – –
 Mental health 2174 – – – 59 – – – 29 55 59 – –
  Unipolar depressive disorder 415 – – – – – – – – – 22 – –
Injuries 367 – – – 1 – – – 0 – 35 – –
 Transport injury – – – – – – – – – – 2 – –
  1. Zero’s (“0”) indicates an amount of zero million in funding; dashes (“–”) indicate that no information on the amount of funding was available. Health areas were chosen to be a representative sample of health areas in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) classification [34]. Adding spending on the various health areas per funder will not total to the funder’s total expenditures, because the categories are a selection of health areas from the GBD report. Funding for selected health areas needs to be interpreted with caution because these data are mutually exclusive for some funders (Wellcome, MRC, CIHR, EC FP7 health, CDMRP), but not for others (NIH, NHMRC)
  2. See Table 4 for funders’ abbreviations
  3. Sources: NIH, http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx; EC FP7 Cooperation Progamme Health theme, http://www.healthcompetence.eu/; MRC and Wellcome Trust taken from the United Kingdom Health Research Analysis 2009/10 (United Kingdom Clinical Research Collaboration, 2012) (http://www.ukcrc.org/research-coordination/health-research-analysis/uk-healthresearch-analysis/3 and http://www.hrcsonline.net/pages/data); CDMRP, funding categorisation based on “physiology classification system” that we were provided by CDMRP through personal communication; CIHR, data received through personal communication; NHMRC, http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants/research-funding-statistics-and-data/funding-datasets . Funding for selected health problems was only reported if funders categorized grants using an indexing system, amounts for various targeted programmes were not included, with the exception of the EC FP7 Cooperation programme, health theme, who requested we use programme-based figures for annual commitments from HealthCompetence.eu
Back to article page

Health Research Policy and Systems

ISSN: 1478-4505

Contact us