2 days ago
Small Investment, Big Returns: Why This NIH Center Matters
UNITED STATES - MAY 10: Activists hold signs during rally outside the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
25 years ago, I had a life-changing experience. I got the biggest break in my career. My application to do a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley was accepted, and I was offered funding support through a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program called the Fogarty AIDS International Training Program. I had little money those days, and without NIH funding and a welcoming professor who cared deeply about global health, I could have never left India for higher education in the United States.
Today, I chair a department of global and public health at a leading Canadian university. The life-changing opportunities I had as a Fogarty trainee at Berkeley allow me to pay it forward by training the next generation of global health leaders.
I was not the only scholar to benefit from Fogarty funding - nearly 8,500 individuals from 132 countries have trained through Fogarty programs since 1989, and many have become leaders in their countries. Several have led groudbreaking research projects, and led inspiring programs and institutions.
Soumya Swaminathan is a great example. After her Fogarty training in the United States, she went on to become a leading HIV and TB researcher, become the Director-General of the Indian Council of Medical Research, and subsequently the first Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization. 'My Fogarty fellowship gave me an opportunity to get exposed to advanced immunological techniques and meet leading experts at a critical stage of my career. It helped spark new ideas and initiate collaboration with international experts which may not have happened otherwise,' she said.
Another shining example is Glenda Gray, who was the first female President of the South African Medical Research Council. 'Becoming a Fogarty Fellow catalysed my career as a clinician scientist, and marked the beginning of my research trajectory," she said. "It enabled me to make contributions to HIV vaccine research and development, as well as research in the area of preventing mother to child transmission. The interventions we developed have led to the control of paediatric HIV and improvements in treatment that have reduced HIV-related mortality in children,' she explained. Gray is currently Director of the Infectious Disease and Oncology Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.
The Fogarty International Center (FIC) has also benefitted US scientists and institutions. In FY24, Fogarty funded 440 U.S. grantees from 122 U.S. institutions in 39 states. Research conducted in Global South countries have led to improved treatments for health challenges of importance to Americans.
'The training programs supported by the FIC over the past 40 years have been unparalleled in their reach and impact around the world,' said Arthur Reingold, Emeritus professor at Berkeley School of Public Health, who has trained hundreds of scholars through his Fogarty grants. 'They have, through their support of highly talented biomedical scientists from scores of low and middle income countries, dramatically improved research and educational capacity globally, as well as markedly enhanced high impact collaborative research on AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and diverse other communicable and non communicable diseases. The benefits resulting from the enhanced research capabilities of scientists supported by the FIC have accrued to people living everywhere, including in the United States,' he elaborated.
Lucian Davis, an Associate Professor at Yale Medicine and the Yale School of Public Health, has also used the Fogarty program to train dozens of American and African scholars. 'Fogarty enables us to train the world's brightest minds to tackle America's leading health priorities—a high-impact, low-cost investment that keeps us connected to the world,' he said.
And guess what, the entire annual budget of the FIC is a merely 0.2% of the total NIH budget - a drop in the bucket. Despite this tiny investment, the FIC has had a spectacular national and global footprint and impact, by any metric.
Today, it greatly saddens me to see defunding of US science agencies, including NIH, and it's devastating impact on US academic institutions and scientists. Several American scientists have either reached out to me to explore options in Canada, or have applied for faculty positions at my university. Scores of American scientists are seeking to flee the country (and become "science refugees"). It boggles my mind that US politicians are allowing this brain drain to happen under their watch. America's economic strength, in part, comes from the nation's immense scientific firepower.
I am especially distressed to learn that the FIC is once again on the chopping block, with the entire $95 million budget FIC budget set to become zero in 2026. How exactly is cutting such an impactful program supposed to make America great?
Even as the world deals with massive crises like pandemics, conflicts, climate change, and widening economic inequities, all of which require truly, global cooperation and coordination, it seems like politicians are choosing narrow self-interests, nationalism, and isolationism. This strategy is not likely to succeed. Why?
We've all witnessed how interconnected the world is during the Covid-19 pandemic. Viruses that emerge in far away places will find us, regardless of who we are or where we happen to live. Every outbreak is merely one long-haul flight away. Smoke from wildfires will travel thousands of miles to darken our skies and choke our lungs.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 7: Smoky haze from wildfires in Canada diminishes the visibility of the Chrysler Building on June 7, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by David) Getty Images
There is no way to protect just one nation or one region when threats are trans-national. Our fates are undisputably intertwined with that of other countries and peoples. There is nothing 'woke' about looking out for each other in an interdependent world.
And that is why America must stay engaged in global health and multi-laterialism. And that is why American lawmakers must work to protect a national treasure like the Fogarty International Center. If an investment is yielding spectacular returns, no smart business person would dream of killing it. So, why defund the FIC and the NIH? If I was a US lawmaker, that is the question I would be asking myself.
I take some hope from the fact that the Senate Appropriations Committee recently rejected the Trump administration's proposed funding cuts to the NIH. But the road ahead is long and hard. I hope good sense will prevail and the powers that be will find a way to save America's phenomenal scientific enterprise. Science matters for America's health. It matters for health of the whole world.
