AFAR is pleased to announce that through the efforts and requests of its Amplifying Geroscience Initiative, Congress recently urged the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prioritize geroscience. Congress issued this guidance to the agencies through “report language” accompanying the fiscal year 2023 appropriations bills for the NIH and FDA.
Highlights of the language include recommending that the National Institute on Aging convene a meeting to set a research agenda for the field and expand its translational geroscience training programs. For NIH more broadly, Congress urged the agency to compile and submit a report that describes current NIH research focused on geroscience and future plans in this area. Meanwhile, at the FDA, Congress urged the agency to develop clearer regulatory pathways for emerging aging treatments and to increase support for regulatory science that can inform these pathways.
These victories resulted from virtual meetings that AFAR arranged in the spring of 2022 between AFAR-affiliated researchers and dozens of congressional staff from both parties in the House and Senate. This was the first time that AFAR had held meetings of this kind with Congress.
AFAR has launched the Amplifying Geroscience Initiative in order to educate policymakers about the broad and potentially transformative benefits of geroscience on older citizens’ health and our nation’s economy. Learn more here.
