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Violence prevention receives less than 1% of NIH funding

For all America’s talk about the importance of preventing violence, the nation does not value this work nearly enough.

Gun violence prevention advocate Jamal Johnson stages a demonstration on Monday, June 6, 2022, at the intersection of Third and South Streets, in Philadelphia. He was calling attention to the hundreds of other shootings that have plagued the city this year and asking city leaders to take action, near the scene of a recent shooting. For all America’s talk about the importance of preventing violence, going by our research budgets, the nation does not value this work nearly enough, according to researchers.
Gun violence prevention advocate Jamal Johnson stages a demonstration on Monday, June 6, 2022, at the intersection of Third and South Streets, in Philadelphia. He was calling attention to the hundreds of other shootings that have plagued the city this year and asking city leaders to take action, near the scene of a recent shooting. For all America’s talk about the importance of preventing violence, going by our research budgets, the nation does not value this work nearly enough, according to researchers.Read moreTom Gralish / MCT
    by Jocelyn C. Anderson and Abigail Hatcher, For The Inquirer
    Published 

Several years ago, in a conference room packed with advocates, police officers, researchers, and health-care providers, then-Vice President Joe Biden unlocked a basic litmus test for societal priorities. “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value,” he told the room.

At the time, Biden was working to ensure that the Violence Against Women Act he championed in the 1990s included enough funding to support the one in four women in the U.S. who will experience violence in their lifetime. He’s said some version of this in other settings as well because he gets it: What gets funded is a marker for what a society cares about.

“What gets funded is a marker for what a society cares about.”

Jocelyn C. Anderson and Abigail Hatcher

Over the years, the comment stuck with us. As a nation, we say many issues are important. Do our budgets reflect that?

One of the most important topics on people’s minds today, particularly in Philadelphia, which just logged its 300th murder in 2022, is violence. There’s also the barrage of recent violent deaths of schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas, increased rates of teen suicide, and modern-day lynchings of Black citizens in Buffalo, N.Y. These are all preventable occurrences, but researchers and community leaders need funding to address them.

So how does the federal government support research to understand, prevent, and respond to violence? With our colleagues Candace W. Burton, Jessica Draughon Moret, and Jessica R. Williams, we decided to take a look.

Over the past decade, the National Institutes of Health spent less than 0.4% of its budget on violence-related research. And this amount dropped by more than 20% between 2011 and 2020. When we searched award data on the website for the National Science Foundation, we found that in 2021, the agency spent just 0.2% of its annual budget on grants including the word violence.

At the National Institutes of Health, “violence against women” research has a similar budget as science to treat transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, the human variation of “mad cow disease,” which has affected only six people in the U.S. The global front doesn’t look any better: The U.S. puts less of its overseas development money toward ending violence against women and girls than nearly any other developed nation.

To us, these stark numbers send a chilling message: For all America’s talk about the importance of preventing violence, the nation does not value this work nearly enough.

The U.S. is home to profound innovations. We have found a way to transform HIV from a death sentence to a chronic disease, and can now live longer with cancer and other deadly diagnoses. Investment in major health challenges — even seemingly unsolvable ones — is a strength of the U.S. scientific system. Surely we should leverage this strength to prevent and address violence?

Private industry largely doesn’t appear to be picking up the slack. The Gates Foundation invested more than $5 billion in 2021, but when we searched its database of grants, only $1.3 million worth of projects included the word violence in the title. That’s 0.02%. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation awarded nine grants in 2020 including the word violence, worth 0.6% of its annual giving.

The first federal gun legislation to be signed into law in more than a decade is a promising and important step toward ending violence. But the sad truth is that we know very little about how effective any new legislation will be because the science around the strategies they can incorporate remain vastly unstudied.

» READ MORE: Adding millions to violence prevention efforts is a waste without evaluation | Opinion

We could use our national scientific framework to solve the problem of violence — we simply don’t have the political will to do so. And so schools, streets, shopping malls, and homes remain some of the most threatening places to be a child, a woman, or a person of color in our country.

As voters and community members, we can hold our government leaders accountable and demand that business and philanthropy participate. As researchers, we must insist that prevention and responses to violence are made a part of our nation’s scientific priorities.

Or we can stand by and wait to see the body count next year, with only thoughts and prayers to protect us.

Jocelyn C. Anderson is a nurse and assistant professor at the Pennsylvania State University Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing. Abigail Hatcher is an assistant professor at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina.