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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Dermatology

Date Submitted: Jan 25, 2025
Date Accepted: Dec 4, 2025

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Identifying Over- and Underfunded Diseases by Comparing National Institutes of Health Funding for Skin Disease Research With US Skin Disease Burden According to 2021 Global Burden of Disease Data: Cross-Sectional Analysis

Park A, Woolhiser E, Riva H, Jaroonwanichkul S, Wan L, Kadri H, Reed M, Hegedus C, Chen D, Duffle D, Kirk J, Christensen S, Juels P, Lamberty E, Shelby E, Dellavalle R

Identifying Over- and Underfunded Diseases by Comparing National Institutes of Health Funding for Skin Disease Research With US Skin Disease Burden According to 2021 Global Burden of Disease Data: Cross-Sectional Analysis

JMIR Dermatol 2026;9:e71468

DOI: 10.2196/71468

PMID: 41494043

PMCID: 12773694

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Comparing NIH funding for skin disease research with US skin disease burden according to Global Burden of Disease 2021: a cross-sectional analysis identifies underfunded and overfunded diseases

  • Aileen Park; 
  • Emily Woolhiser; 
  • Hannah Riva; 
  • Sandra Jaroonwanichkul; 
  • Leo Wan; 
  • Haaris Kadri; 
  • Madison Reed; 
  • Catherine Hegedus; 
  • Dana Chen; 
  • Danielle Duffle; 
  • Jessica Kirk; 
  • Sydney Christensen; 
  • Parker Juels; 
  • Elizabeth Lamberty; 
  • Emma Shelby; 
  • Robert Dellavalle

ABSTRACT

Background:

Understanding the burden of various skin diseases can help guide funding allocation for skin disease research. In 2015, Hagstrom and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study that found partial correlation between United States (US) skin disease burden according to the 2010 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding from 2012-13.

Objective:

This study aims to re-investigate the relationship between US skin disease burden and NIH research funding allocation using the latest data from GBD 2021 and NIH funding data from fiscal years 2021-22.

Methods:

A cross-sectional analysis was conducted to compare the disability-adjusted life years for 15 skin conditions from GBD 2021 with NIH funding for these conditions from 2021-2022. Data was sourced from GBD Results and the NIH RePORT database

Results:

NIH funding for skin disease research and US skin disease burden according to GBD were partially correlated with several outliers. Malignant skin melanoma and pruritus were relatively overfunded, while psoriasis and urticaria were relatively underfunded.

Conclusions:

Disease burden is just one of the many important factors that must be considered when allocating resources including research funding to encourage research efforts that improve patient outcomes and positively impact public health.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Park A, Woolhiser E, Riva H, Jaroonwanichkul S, Wan L, Kadri H, Reed M, Hegedus C, Chen D, Duffle D, Kirk J, Christensen S, Juels P, Lamberty E, Shelby E, Dellavalle R

Identifying Over- and Underfunded Diseases by Comparing National Institutes of Health Funding for Skin Disease Research With US Skin Disease Burden According to 2021 Global Burden of Disease Data: Cross-Sectional Analysis

JMIR Dermatol 2026;9:e71468

DOI: 10.2196/71468

PMID: 41494043

PMCID: 12773694

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