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Research funding at top of mind for new heart association president
Pushing for more research funding remains a top priority of the American Heart Association despite the tough fiscal climate, its new president tells The Hill.
Dr. Gordon Tomaselli, the chief of cardiology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said he plans to push for a robust internal research program at AHA while advocating for more funding at the National Institutes of Health. Tomaselli took over Friday; his term lasts one year.
"I know this is a difficult and uphill task given the current fiscal environment," he said. "But we need to change the tenor of the discussion, from one of expenditure to one of investment. If we look at what's happened in medicine over the past three or four decades, much of it can be traced back to the NIH and fundamental discoveries at the NIH that were so early that you could never envision any corporation investing the kind of money to get to those discoveries."
The NIH took a $321 million haircut in the 2011 budget, and advocates fear even deeper cuts as lawmakers weigh an $18 billion cut to the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Education for 2012.
Other priorities, he said, include continuing to advocate for the coverage expansions of the healthcare reform law, especially for preventive care.
"Ultimately," he said, "I don't think we can get our hands around cost — whether it's cardiovascular disease, or diabetes, or cancer — unless we redouble our efforts in preventive work."
The nation's largest cardiovascular health organization also wants to tackle the nation's looming health problems, including smoking, which is still enjoyed by about 20 percent of Americans and is a rising health problem worldwide; childhood obesity; and excessive salt consumption.
"We've had a little bit of disagreement with the FDA on this point," Tomaselli said. "We both believe that salt reduction is an important issue, but we have had differences in the target that we need to shoot for. We're in favor of a more aggressive target [1,500 mg daily vs. 2,300 mg for the FDA]."
The AHA has been calling for more informative food labeling as the preferred way to tackle nutrition issues.
"Our stance right now is more of providing information for people to make the right decisions for themselves rather than enforcing regulation," he said. "The bottom line is that if you inform people the hope is that regulations will come as the demand for lower salt food, etc., etc., increases."
