Whether you are a researcher, administrator, NIH staff member, or member of the public, you can turn to Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories (RCDC) for insights on your biomedical research areas of interest.
This article provides an overview of RCDC’s process, newly added categories, steps to explore relevant NIAID extramural data, and more.
What Is RCDC?
NIH’s Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) is a computerized reporting process that categorizes NIH’s biomedical research funding into more than 300 categories at the end of each fiscal year (FY).
RCDC incorporates four types of NIH funding:
- Research grants (extramural research)
- Research and development (R&D) contracts
- Research conducted in NIH’s own laboratories and clinics (intramural research)
- Interagency agreements
We often encourage researchers to use NIH RePORT tools, including RCDC, to identify potential collaborators. Refer to Find Funded Projects and More Using NIH Databases.
Alongside funding data, RCDC displays mortality data and U.S. disease prevalence figures to provide the public health context for NIH’s research portfolio. That disease burden data is sourced from CDC—prevalence data is from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and mortality data is from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS).
Newly Available RCDC Categories for FY 2023
RCDC has seven new categories that were added to the categorical spending page:
- Biodefense and Related Countermeasures
- Fentanyl Misuse and Addiction
- Harm Reduction for Substance Misuse
- Menopause
- Natural Products
- Primary Health Care
- Recovery Support Services
Additionally, NIH converted two manually curated categories—Minority Health and Health Disparities—into five automated categories to enhance accuracy and better distinguish research funding from workforce development and capacity building funding.
The categories listed below will display funding data for FY 2023 onward:
- Health Disparities Research
- Racial and Ethnic Minority Health Research
- Health Disparities and Racial or Ethnic Minority Health Research
- Workforce Diversity and Outreach
- Building Research Capacity at Institutions with Limited NIH Funding
Note that, because the new Racial and Ethnic Minority Health Research category does not include workforce diversity and capacity building projects, the new category’s support total is smaller than the old Minority Health category.
How to Explore RCDC Funding Data
To familiarize you with the categorical spending page interface, suppose you want to find NIH funding data on a research area relevant to NIAID’s scientific mission, such as malaria.
First, start with these steps to explore category-specific RCDC data:
- Go to Categorical Spending Page and scroll past the graph to the top of the Estimates of Funding table.
- Just above the table, in the field labeled “Filter Research/Disease Areas,” type “Malaria.” This step filters the table to display only matching category rows.
- The table should now show both “Malaria” and “Malaria Vaccine.” Click on the word “Malaria” (which is not hyperlinked) so that the row is highlighted in blue.
- This step filters the table above to display only that category row.
The screenshot below illustrates the resulting interface:
The U.S. mortality (number of deaths) and U.S. prevalence (percentage of respondents affected) data are derived from NVSS and NHIS data, respectively.
Note that the totals in RCDC may differ from amounts shown in other NIH funding reports because NIH does not expressly allocate funds by RCDC category and awards often fit multiple categories. The annual categorical estimates reflect actual research projects funded, and those amounts will vary in each topic area as a result of ongoing science and the NIH budget.
Next, in the FY 2023 column of the Malaria row, you could follow the “244” link to a complete list of 446 NIH-funded projects. The list includes the following features:
- An “Export” button to download the data list in Excel spreadsheet format.
- Columns to identify the funding institute or center, project number, title, investigator name, organization, location, and amount.
Lastly, you can select any linked project number (e.g., 5R01AI153444-03) for details such as the abstract, publications, and more.
To further pique your interest, we present two more screenshots below depicting funding data on other categories relevant to NIAID—Hepatitis C and Food Allergies:
For more information, consult RCDC Frequently Asked Questions.
Contact NIH RePORT Support Team with any questions or comments about the database.