National Institutes of Health funding to neurosurgery departments, FY2015–FY2025: real-terms trends, training infrastructure, and MeSH retrieval coverage
- 1Department of Neurosurgery, Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
Abstract
Introduction: Federal research funding and publication output are among the principal quantitative measures of academic neurosurgery, and the validity of each depends on how it is measured. We characterised National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to neurosurgery departments in real terms, examined whether early-career award trajectories can be partially characterised from public administrative data, and quantified the coverage of MeSH-based publication retrieval.
Methods: We analysed all NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORTER) grants administratively assigned to “NEUROSURGERY” departments (FY1992–FY2026; accessed 8 March 2026), deduplicated to 8480 grant-year records across 87 institutions. Funding was deflated to constant 2025 US dollars using the Consumer Price Index. Institutional concentration was measured with the Gini coefficient, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, and top-share ratios. We examined transitions from early-career (fellowship or K) to independent (R-type) awards, modelled the association between institutional T32 training grants and later R01-investigator counts with adjustment for baseline research intensity, tested the recent funding trajectory against its prior trend, and quantified MeSH retrieval coverage of neurosurgical publications via NCBI E-utilities.
Results: Real funding to neurosurgery departments rose from $131.2M (FY2015) to a peak of $268.5M (FY2023; real compound annual growth 6.5%), then declined to $245.7M (FY2025); the FY2024 and FY2025 values were both lower than expected under the extrapolated FY2015–FY2023 trend. The peak and subsequent decline were unchanged by deduplication. From FY2023 to FY2025 the departmental series fell 8.5%, compared with a 1.1% real decline in NIH-wide research project grant obligations and a 5.7% decline in NIH-wide award counts. R01 and R37 awards provided 56.2% of funding, and institutional concentration was stable (Gini 0.54–0.58). Within department-attributed data, later independent R-type funding was much more frequent after mentored K awards (40.4%) than after fellowships (8.0%). Departments holding a T32 grant had more distinct R01 investigators (unadjusted incidence rate ratio 3.5), but this association did not persist after adjustment for baseline departmental funding and prior R01-investigator count (adjusted incidence rate ratio 1.07; 95% CI 0.45–2.56). MeSH-restricted retrieval returned less than half as many neurosurgical records as keyword-augmented retrieval by 2023.
Conclusions: Departmental NIH funding grew in real terms but has fallen below its prior trend since FY2023. Mentored K awards, more than fellowships, preceded independent funding, whereas the apparent T32 advantage reflected pre-existing departmental research intensity. The wider NIH benchmark suggests a shared post-2023 funding constraint, but the departmental decline was steeper. MeSH-restricted retrieval substantially under-captures the neurosurgical literature relative to broader keyword-augmented and journal-anchored strategies. Funding and bibliometric indicators of academic neurosurgery should both be read with attention to measurement validity; all results describe departments as administrative units, not individual neurosurgeons.
Related
- Post-autopsy communication with next of kin in medico-legal contexts: A cross-national survey of practices in French and Belgian Forensic Institutes
- Cost‐Related Medication Underuse and Coping Behaviors in Breast Cancer Survivors Taking Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Medication Enrolled in the National Institutes of Health All of us Research Program
- Evaluating the use of vision-face-arm-speech-time in stroke admissions: A comparative study with national institutes of health stroke scale and orthoptist assessment in an emergency department
- National Institutes of Health Funding for Research About Transgender and Nonbinary Youths
- Vitamin B6 Doses on United States Dietary Supplement Labels Relative to the Tolerable Upper Intake Level: A Census of the National Institutes of Health Dietary Supplement Label Database.
BibTeX
@article{mclean2026national,
title = {{National Institutes of Health funding to neurosurgery departments, FY2015–FY2025: real-terms trends, training infrastructure, and MeSH retrieval coverage}},
author = {Aaron Lawson McLean and Julian Kahr and Christian Senft},
journal = {Brain \& Spine},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.bas.2026.107486},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bas.2026.107486},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - National Institutes of Health funding to neurosurgery departments, FY2015–FY2025: real-terms trends, training infrastructure, and MeSH retrieval coverage
AU - Aaron Lawson McLean
AU - Julian Kahr
AU - Christian Senft
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/24
JO - Brain & Spine
DO - 10.1016/j.bas.2026.107486
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bas.2026.107486
AB - Introduction: Federal research funding and publication output are among the principal quantitative measures of academic neurosurgery, and the validity of each depends on how it is measured. We characterised National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to neurosurgery departments in real terms, examined whether early-career award trajectories can be partially characterised from public administrative data, and quantified the coverage of MeSH-based publication retrieval. Methods: We analysed all NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORTER) grants administratively assigned to “NEUROSURGERY” departments (FY1992–FY2026; accessed 8 March 2026), deduplicated to 8480 grant-year records across 87 institutions. Funding was deflated to constant 2025 US dollars using the Consumer Price Index. Institutional concentration was measured with the Gini coefficient, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, and top-share ratios. We examined transitions from early-career (fellowship or K) to independent (R-type) awards, modelled the association between institutional T32 training grants and later R01-investigator counts with adjustment for baseline research intensity, tested the recent funding trajectory against its prior trend, and quantified MeSH retrieval coverage of neurosurgical publications via NCBI E-utilities. Results: Real funding to neurosurgery departments rose from $131.2M (FY2015) to a peak of $268.5M (FY2023; real compound annual growth 6.5%), then declined to $245.7M (FY2025); the FY2024 and FY2025 values were both lower than expected under the extrapolated FY2015–FY2023 trend. The peak and subsequent decline were unchanged by deduplication. From FY2023 to FY2025 the departmental series fell 8.5%, compared with a 1.1% real decline in NIH-wide research project grant obligations and a 5.7% decline in NIH-wide award counts. R01 and R37 awards provided 56.2% of funding, and institutional concentration was stable (Gini 0.54–0.58). Within department-attributed data, later independent R-type funding was much more frequent after mentored K awards (40.4%) than after fellowships (8.0%). Departments holding a T32 grant had more distinct R01 investigators (unadjusted incidence rate ratio 3.5), but this association did not persist after adjustment for baseline departmental funding and prior R01-investigator count (adjusted incidence rate ratio 1.07; 95% CI 0.45–2.56). MeSH-restricted retrieval returned less than half as many neurosurgical records as keyword-augmented retrieval by 2023. Conclusions: Departmental NIH funding grew in real terms but has fallen below its prior trend since FY2023. Mentored K awards, more than fellowships, preceded independent funding, whereas the apparent T32 advantage reflected pre-existing departmental research intensity. The wider NIH benchmark suggests a shared post-2023 funding constraint, but the departmental decline was steeper. MeSH-restricted retrieval substantially under-captures the neurosurgical literature relative to broader keyword-augmented and journal-anchored strategies. Funding and bibliometric indicators of academic neurosurgery should both be read with attention to measurement validity; all results describe departments as administrative units, not individual neurosurgeons.
SN - 2772-5294
ER -