In 2008, Congress entrusted NIH with the task of reporting its funded research with greater transparency and consistency. Since then, the NIH has fulfilled this request via the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system.
With this process, everyone, including those from the public service, researchers, NIH staff, administrators, and members of the public, can access the Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories to find details on biochemical research areas of their interest.
But what exactly is the NIH’s Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC), and how does it work?
We’ll tell you about that briefly before presenting the latest RCDC data from 2008 to 2024.
What Is RCDC?
The NIH’s Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) is an electronic reporting process that organizes the areas of biomedical research funding into a database of hundreds of categories at the end of every fiscal year (FY).
The RCDC report includes four NIH funding types:
- Research grants (external)
- Research within NIH clinics and laboratories.
- Research and development contracts.
To compile the database, the RCDC system performs data mining based on categories and clusters that fit into NIH’s expert-selected definitions of the project categories. Each category represents all the aspects of the area, including its main and related topics.
By mining data and categorizing the areas, the National Institutes of Health ensures uniformity and reduces variability in the reporting categories.
In the comprehensive database, NIH presents a comprehensive table displaying the support level across the years, from 2008 to the latest completed fiscal year, and sometimes, estimates for the current year.
Since 2008, the categories have increased from 215 to the current 327. Recent category additions in 2024 include:
- Women’s Health Research (now updated to automated coding)
- Primary Immunodeficiencies
Some categories were also renamed in 2024:
| Name Before |
Name Now |
| Dental/Oral and Craniofacial Disease |
Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Disease |
| Small Pox |
Orthopoxviruses |
| Pediatric AIDS |
Pediatric - AIDS |
| Vaccine Related (AIDS) |
Vaccine Related - AIDS |
| ALS |
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) |
| Colo-Rectal Cancer |
Colorectal Cancer |
| Pneumonia & Influenza |
Pneumonia and Influenza |
The table’s data are based on contracts, grants, and other funding processes used by the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
After the columns for each fiscal year, you also find two 2016 additions: “Mortality” and “Prevalence”.
So, what does the current NIH database of Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories look like?
You can check the table below to find out, then read a quick explanation of how to explore the RCDC spending data in the section after that.
Complete Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories (2008-2024)
You’ll find the RCDC funding data for the fiscal years 2008 to 2024 in the table published June 17, 2025. The estimates for the fiscal year 2025 are not included due to some ongoing administrative changes.
You also find data on the Mortality and Prevalence categories.
How to Explore RCDC Funding Data
When exploring the RCDC funding data, start by identifying the specific research category of NIH funding for which you want to find data (we take “Aging” as an example). Then follow these steps:
1.Go to the NIH Categorical Spending page and scroll down to the Estimates of Funding table.
2.Type your category of interest in the “Filter Research/Disease Areas” field, in our example, “Aging”. The relevant rows and corresponding graph will be displayed as shown below.
3.The table shows “Aging” and “Biomedical Imaging”, a category related to aging. You can check the funding figures for each fiscal year of the two aging categories by clicking on the category name of each entry. Doing that highlights the row in blue and shows the specific figures on the graph.
4.Click on the “Export” button to download the data in Excel format.
5.Click on the hyperlinked figures under the FY of your interest to check details on: the funding institute/center, project number, project title, project investigator name, organization name, county/state, and amount in millions of dollars.
6.You can also click on the hyperlinked project number for each row for additional details, such as the abstract and related publications.
Repeat these steps for any of the funding categories you want to explore.
Concluding Thoughts
The Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) makes available the spending details related to different areas of biomedical research by creating a computerized database of over 300 categories for every fiscal year.
You and anyone interested, from researchers to the general public, can access the data to find details on a research category of interest.
Also, NIH encourages researchers to use the RCDC and its other RePORT tools to find potential collaborators.
