December 2009 Fact Sheet

Federal funding (National Institutes of Health) into the prevention and treatment of cerebral palsy is very low when compared to other childhood conditions. The disparity becomes readily apparent when examined on an annual funding per new case basis. For instance, NIH funding for cerebral palsy was $29 million dollars in FY 2009 and is projected to be $29 million in FY 2010  (NIH RePORT, 2009).  Estimates of CP prevalence in the western world range from 2 to 4.4 cases per 1000 live births; and is widely believed to be increasing.  Given that there were over 4 million lives births in the US in 2005 (CDC, 2006), a reasonable estimate of the number of new cases of cerebral palsy diagnosed each year is 12,000.  Thus, on an annual basis $2400 Federal research dollars are spent for every new case of cerebral palsy.  In comparison, $93 million Federal dollars were spent on cystic fibrosis research and it is projected that $94 million Federal dollars will be spent in FY10.  In the US, there were an estimated 0.3 new cases of cystic fibrosis per 1000 live births  (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute), resulting in 4000 new cases annually.  Thus, $23,000 Federal research dollars were spent for every new case of cystic fibrosis last year, a 10-fold difference over that spent for CP research.  Go to the NIH RePORT website to see Federal funding amounts for various conditions.  HYPERLINK “http://report.nih.gov/rcdc/categories/” http://report.nih.gov/rcdc/categories/

Many childhood health conditions have been able to obtain support from the general public to support research activities.  The US Cystic Fibrosis Foundation provides $85 million annually in research support, and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, $156 million.  Our foundation, the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation is the only Foundation in the US entirely devoted to research for the prevention and treatment of cerebral palsy. Unfortunately, our  entire research budget in FY09 was only $1.6 million. Clearly, for advances in prevention and treatment of one the most common disabling conditions of childhood, cerebral palsy, more money is needed to fund the research that must to be done to decrease the number of new cases of cerebral palsy, to develop early treatments that might prevent or lessen the disability associated with brain injury and to improve motor and cognitive function in children and adults with CP.  So what can YOU do? Write your Congressman and alert them to this funding disparity! Donate to CPIRF what you can so that we can continue to fund more and better research for CP! We are the only private foundation in the US solely devoted to CP research.