House of Representatives Approves $20.5 Million in Lupus-Specific Funding

The House of Representatives today passed a package of fiscal year 2021 spending bills that includes more than $20 million in funding for lupus research and education programs, and a significant increase for the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of lupus research in the world.

In total, the House today passed six appropriations bills previously passed by the Committee on Appropriations, including the fiscal year 2021 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) Appropriations bill and the fiscal year 2021 Department of Defense (DoD) Appropriations bill.

LHHS Appropriations

The LHHS spending bill includes:

• $8.5 million for the National Lupus Patient Registry at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC);
• $2 million for the Lupus Program at the Office of Minority Health;
• $47 billion for the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of lupus research in the world, an increase of more than $5 billion over 2020.

For complete details about these programs, click here.

DoD Appropriations

The fiscal year 2021 DoD Appropriations bill includes $10 million for the Lupus Research Program. This marks the second consecutive year that the Defense Subcommittee has supported $10 million for the Lupus Research Program, and if enacted into law, it would bring total funding for the Program to $35 million in just five years since it was established in 2017.

After leading the fight to establish a lupus-specific research program through the DoD, the Lupus Foundation of America and lupus advocates have continued to successfully advocate for the Program. Earlier this year thousands of advocates urged their members of Congress to support $10 million – the exact amount included in this legislation – for the Lupus Research Program as part of the first-ever Digital Lupus Advocacy Summit in March.

Next Steps

The Senate has not yet begun their annual appropriations work for fiscal year 2021. Once they have completed and advanced their bills, the two chambers will convene a conference committee to reconcile the differences in the two sets of funding bills and prepare a final version to pass both chambers and be signed into law by the president.

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