Is the amount of disease-specific NIH funding related to burden of disease?

Update: This Data viz was featured in an article on Vox

A recent article published in JAMA looked at the relationship between NIH funding and the U.S. burden of disease. The figure below is based off of data published in a supplementary appendix. For most conditions the relationship between the % burden in the population and the % of NIH funding is fairly similar. However, some conditions receive substantially more in funding relative to its burden (HIV/AIDS and cancer), while some receive much less (injuries).

Relationship between amount of NIH funding and burden of disease

Burden of disease and funding

Notes: % of total NIH funding was calculated by dividing the condition-specific funding amount by the total NIH spending amount for the 27 listed conditions. % of total burden of disease was calculated by dividing the condition-specific disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) amount by the total DALYS for all 27 listed conditions.

Source: eTable 3.  NIH Disease-Specific Research Funding and Burden of Disease for Selected Conditions. Moses HM III, Matheson DHM, Cairns-Smith S, George BP, Palisch C, Dorsey ER. The Anatomy of Medical Research: US and International Comparisons. JAMA. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.15939

Are scientists guilty of newsjacking Ebola?

Given that Ebola is such a hot topic, newsjacking of Ebola to make stories relevant is commonplace. However, journalists aren’t the only ones who benefit from staying relevant, scientists benefit as well. This dataviz was created to capture any uptick in scientific articles about Ebola since the most recent epidemic.

Trend in the % of scientific articles about Ebola from 1990-2014

Graphic 10

Notes: To obtain the percent of publications published each year the tile/abstract field was searched for ‘Ebola’ every year from 1990 to 2014 in PubMed. 2014 data is up to 10/27/2014.

What the dataviz above shows is that there was a 360% increase in the number of scientific articles published about Ebola in 2014 compared to 2013. This significant uptick shows that the scientific community clearly responded to the mass media attention about the epidemic. Of course we want science to be relevant, but are there really that many Ebola experts out there and that much new Ebola science to discuss to account for the uptick? Or is the uptick just a result of newsjacking Ebola in order to seem relevant?

Hospitals account for majority of health care-related debt

According to a recent 2013 report, health care-related debt is the leading type of consumer debt collected. Student loan debt is the next most common consumer debt collected, followed by credit card debt. The visualization below takes a look at the major types of debt contributing to the high levels of health care-related debt. Debt owed to hospitals accounts for 70.2% of the health care-related consumer debt, followed by debt owed to physician groups (18.7%) and clinics (11.1%).

Types of health care debt collected in 2013

Horizontal stacked bar chart showing the percent of debt due to hospitals, physicians and clinics

Data Source: Table 7.  The Impact of Third-Party Debt Collection on the U.S. National and State Economies in 2013. Prepared for ACA International July 2014.