House Committee Approves Millions in Lupus Funding

UPDATE: on July 29, the House of Representatives passed the LHHS appropriations bill.

Moments ago, the Committee on Appropriations in the U.S. House of Representatives passed their fiscal year 2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) appropriations bill. We are thrilled to announce that it includes funding for several critical lupus priorities:

• $10.5 million for the National Lupus Patient Registry at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an increase of $1 million over fiscal year 2021;
• $75.8 million for the Office of Minority Health (OMH), which includes the National Lupus Training, Outreach, and Clinical Trial Education Program;
• $49 billion for the National Institutes of Health, an increase of $6.5 billion over last year for the largest public funder of lupus research in the world.

Most notably, the increase for the National Lupus Patient Registry at the CDC, if enacted into law, would represent the fourth consecutive year Congress has increased funding for the program by $1 million. In fiscal year 2017, Congress funded the program at $6 million – if the $10.5 million approved by the House Committee today were to become law, funding will have increased by 75% in just five years.

The Foundation and lupus advocates were instrumental in establishing both the National Lupus Patient Registry at the CDC in 2003 and the lupus program at OMH in 2009.

Since then, the voices of lupus advocates have secured $81.8 million and $18.9 million for the lupus programs at CDC and OMH respectively.

As with every one of our advocacy victories, we are grateful to the lupus advocates who share their stories with their members of Congress and secure their support for these programs. We are especially thankful to the hundreds of advocates who led more than 300 virtual congressional meetings as part of the 2021 Digital Lupus Advocacy Summit this past March and the thousands more who participated online.

We are also grateful to our champions in the Congressional Lupus Caucus who lead our fight on Capitol Hill, including the Caucus Co-chairs - Representatives Bill Keating (D-MA), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY).

Next Steps

The legislation is expected to be considered by the full House of Representatives later this month. They are also expected to consider the fiscal year 2022 Department of Defense appropriations bill (advanced by the Committee on July 13) which includes $10 million for the Lupus Research Program. The Senate has yet to begin working on their fiscal year 2022 spending bills.

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