MASSDEVICE ON CALL — The famed Framingham Heart Study lost 40% of its budget to sequestration, which means layoffs and closures are on the way for the nation’s longest-running cardiovascular disease trial.
The study lost $4 million of its annual $9 million budget thanks to automatic funding cuts that took effect amid federal sequestration, TheHeart.org reported. The next level of contractual funding for the study will go from a 7-year deal to just 2 years, and there will be no funding for examinations.
"This will result in a considerable scale-back of our research scope and our ability to identify new risk factors for cardiovascular disease," FHS director Dr. Daniel Levy told TheHeart.org. "While we’ve collected a lot of information already, there are next-level studies to be completed. We are hopeful that significant scientific efforts will continue as a consequence of investigator-initiated grants."
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