White House Submits President’s Budget Request for FY 2026
The Office of Management and Budget formally transmitted President Trump’s budget request on May 30.
As was foreshadowed in the “skinny budget”, the president’s budget request
implements Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy
Jr.’s planned HHS reorganization by combining several existing agencies into
a new Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).
The budget document states that
“AHA combines the work of the Office of Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH),
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and several centers
and programs formerly in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This organization consists of the following components: Primary Care, Maternal
and Child Health, Mental and Behavioral Health, Environmental Health, HIV/AIDS,
Health Workforce, AHA Policy, Research, and Oversight, which includes the Surgeon General.
For 340B Office of Pharmacy Affairs, please see the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chapter.”
All oral health workforce programs are eliminated, as are those of medicine and nursing.
The sole exceptions are those positions within the National Health Service Corps,
but all grant programs to non-governmental entities are eliminated.
The request for the National Institutes of Health is $27.5 billion, a substantial
reduction from the current funding level of $44.5 billion.
Moreover, the National
Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) is proposed to be combined
into a new National Institute of Neuroscience and Brain Research, along with the
current National Eye Institute and National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
No additional information is available, at this writing, about the NIH budget or
proposed reorganization; the NIH website where it would appear simply says “Pending.”
ADEA AGR will report more when more information is available.
ADEA, along with our other oral health partners at the American Dental Association,
American Association of Pediatric Dentists and the American Association for Dental,
Oral and Craniofacial Research, wrote to the Appropriations Committees of Congress
on March 26, requesting continuation of all our programs and maintaining NIDCR as a separate research institute.
Since then, we have been meeting with members of the Committee staff as well as
the staff of individual Members of Congress who are members of those committees.
With the release of the budget document, we will intensify our advocacy efforts
and likely call on you—our most effective oral health advocates—for assistance.
