Published in the EH Star 8/3/2017
Dear Editor,
To anyone living on the East End it is apparent that tick-borne diseases are a health crisis. We need the federal government to provide funding on both the local and national level for this public health emergency. And yet the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts funding to the National Institutes of Health by 20 percent (nearly $6 billion) and to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 17 percent ($1.2 billion).
Lee Zeldin, we need you to stand up to your own party and demand that funding be increased to these entities. If we’ve seen anything over the past decades, it’s that diseases can be controlled, and in some cases eradicated, by the dedicated efforts of legislators who care enough to fight for funding so that researchers and physicians have the resources to tackle these problems.
CAROL DEISTLER, Springs
I checked the NIH funding for Lyme disease for CD-1 versus the entire state of NY (in dollars x 1000), see below. * projected numbers are provided by the NIH but are subject to budget changes dictated by Congress.
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | |
| NYS | 1880 | 1766 | 2539 | 2207 | stable* | decrease* |
| CD1 | 657 | 691 | 767 | 236 | ||
| % CD1/NYS | 0.34 | 0.39 | 0.30 | 0.10 |
Note the slippage in the share of NIH research dollars for CD-1 since Zeldin has been in office (2014). We have gone from 39% to 10% of state wide funding for Lyme Disease Research in CD-1. That is nothing to brag about.
Source: https://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx
David Posnett MD
R&R - Reachout and Rebuild 
Does anyone know how these funds are actually spent? I’ve never seen any evidence of federal involvement in tick borne disease prevention, control, or research on eastern Long Island, or any place else for that matter.
@971romeo see my comments below! The public is unlikely to “see” what goes on in research laboratories: mostly microscopic and molecular genetics. Results published in the scientific literature and not in Newsday!
Good analysis added to a good letter.
Sent from my iPhone
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@971romeo you can look up the individual NIH funded studies:
for instance here are studies funded in 2015:
https://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending_project_listing.aspx?FY=2015&ARRA=N&DCat=Lyme%20Disease
If you click on the project number you will get a detailed description.
@971romeo Most of the NIH funded studies in CD-1 go to Stony Brook. They have the most competent scientists. Remember these are peer reviewed studies. So a committee of experts chooses what gets funded and what doesn’t. Zeldin does not choose what gets funded. He along with the rest of Congress just determine the over all funding level for NIH, CDC etc.