Have you ever wanted to know more about where your tax dollars are going when they are allocated to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or what particular women’s health research is being carried out by the federal agency? Enter, the new NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT). This “one stop shop” allows users to access data, analyses and reports on NIH activities, including the agencies expenditures and research results.
Perhaps a woman wanted to know more about the amount of funding that was put towards a particular research field or disease. The NIH RePORT website (using the Categorical Spending tab) now links directly to an easy to understand table showing how much money was spent in each fiscal year, with and without the Recovery Act monies. More impressive, is that the funding level for each item can further be broken down by specific initiative if the user clicks on each category’s fiscal year total. The table reports historical data for fiscal years 2008-2011, and estimates for 2012-2013 based on Research, Condition and Disease Category actual data.
This particular tool was a recent US Health and Human Services Innovates Program winner and is a creative and important way to interact with the NIH and learn more about current and future directions in women’s health initiatives.