摘要Background: The Institute of Medicine has proposed that the amount of disease-specific research funding provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) be systematically and consistently compared with the burden of disease for society. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study comparing estimates of disease-specific funding in 1996 with data on six measures of the burden of disease. The measures were total mortality, years of life lost, and number of hospital days in 1994 and incidence, prevalence, and disability-adjusted life-years (one disability-adjusted life-year is defined as the loss of one year of healthy life to disease) in 1990. With the use of these measures as explanatory variables in a regression analysis, predicted funding was calculated and compared with actual funding.