Useful Stats: Department of Health and Human Services R&D Obligations per State 2001-2005

The technology agenda for President Obama includes both advancing biomedical research and improving the efficiency of medical treatment. Coupling this federal strategy with the initiatives of many states to stimulate health and biotechnology-related research may result in a boon of federal R&D spending from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within the states.

Similar to a recent article examining the concentration and funding levels of DOE-related research (see the January 7, 2009 issue of the Digest), SSTI has prepared a table displaying the amount of HHS obligations for each state from 2001 to 2005, the most recent years available. The table also tracks the percentage of each state's total federal R&D obligations that originated from the HHS. This statistic shows the critical importance of health and medicine related-research for some states, or for states with large amounts of federal R&D coming in, the degree of diversification in the state's R&D portfolio.

For the U.S. as a whole, HHS R&D obligations increased every year, rising from $21.25 billion in 2001 to $28.45 billion in 2005. Over this five-year period, the HHS share of federal R&D peaked in 2003 at 28.7 percent of the nation's total, but two years later in 2005 reached its lowest share at 26.6 percent of total R&D funding.

As the home to HHS divisions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Maryland led the country with $7.02 billion in HHS R&D funding in 2005, just under one-quarter of all HHS R&D obligations. This was followed by California at $3.26 billion, Massachusetts at $2.21 billion, New York at $1.97 billion, and Pennsylvania at $1.43 billion. These five states alone accounted for 55.7 percent of HHS's total obligations in 2005. North Carolina and Texas were the other two states in 2005 where HHS R&D obligations surpassed one billion dollars.

Four states and Puerto Rico had HHS R&D obligations make up more than 50 percent of their total federal R&D obligations in each of those five years.For each year, North Carolina had at least 66 percent of their total federal R&D obligations coming from the HHS. Over this same period, Puerto Rico consistently had 58 percent of its total R&D federal portfolio from the HHS. Wisconsin always had more than 57 percent, Oregon more than 57 percent, and Kentucky more than 54 percent.

On the other end of the scale, there were 10 states from 2001 to 2005 where HHS R&D obligations did not exceed 20 percent of the state's total federal R&D obligations. In only one state, DOE R&D-heavy New Mexico, did the percentage of HHS funding not exceed 5 percent of the state's total R&D obligations.

SSTI's table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/020409t.htm

The original data for each state, including the R&D breakouts for every agency in addition to HHS, can be found at the NSF's Federal Funds for Research and Development series. They can be accessed at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/fedfunds/