ACR pushes funding and cases

The American College of Radiology is pressing Congress to shield federal research money while using real patient cases to train the next wave of radiologists. (acr.org) In testimony submitted April 2, 2025, the group asked the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee for at least $51.3 billion for the National Institutes of Health in fiscal 2026 and $1.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. It also said ARPA-H should keep a separate appropriation outside the National Institutes of Health base budget. (acr.org) The American College of Radiology tied that request to imaging projects already underway, including the ARPA-H ImagiNg Data EXchange project, the ARPA-H Biomedical Data Fabric Toolbox, the Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial, and a National Cancer Institute image repository built from lung cancer screening data. (acr.org) Congress has been writing the fiscal 2026 health spending bills against competing funding targets. The American College of Radiology said the White House budget sought an $18 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health and a reduction of more than $500 million for ARPA-H, while later House and Senate bills moved in different directions. (acr.org 1) (acr.org 2) By September 2025, the House Appropriations Committee bill would have provided $48 billion for the National Institutes of Health and cut ARPA-H to $945 million, while the Senate bill would have put the National Institutes of Health at $48.7 billion and kept ARPA-H at $1.5 billion. The House report also singled out medical imaging as essential to cancer screening trials. (acr.org) At the same time, the American College of Radiology has been expanding case-based teaching, which trains doctors by walking through scans, diagnoses, and pathology from actual cases instead of only testing recall. Its RadExam platform was built with the Association of Program Directors in Radiology to give residency programs peer-reviewed, psychometrically validated exams tied to national benchmarks. (acr.org) The group’s American College of Radiology Institute for Radiologic Pathology runs a four-week radiologic-pathology correlation course for residents and fellows that requires case submission from radiology trainees. The 2026 resident or fellow fee is $2,275, and the course schedule lists five offerings across 2026 and 2027, including an in-person session in Silver Spring, Maryland. (acr.org) The Institute for Radiologic Pathology also maintains an honor roll of best-case award recipients and has added a 2026 webinar series for medical students, interns, and residents in genitourinary, gastrointestinal, pediatrics, musculoskeletal, cardiothoracic, breast imaging, and neuroradiology. The sessions are built around radiologic-pathologic correlation, the practice of matching what appears on an image with what is happening in tissue. (acr.org 1) (acr.org 2) That combination of lobbying and teaching shows how the American College of Radiology is trying to protect the federal pipeline that funds imaging research while also standardizing how residents learn to read complex cases. Both efforts run through the same institution: one aimed at appropriators on Capitol Hill, the other at trainees preparing for clinical practice. (acr.org 1) (acr.org 2)