Inside STAT: Funding questions loom for foundation Congress created to help the FDA

(HYACINTH EMPINADO / STAT)

More than a decade ago, Congress established a little-known nonprofit to help the FDA work with drug companies, researchers, nonprofits, or other businesses who might want to back a project that would make the agency’s job easier. But in the past decade, the foundation has raised less than $15 million. That pales in comparison to the amounts raised by similar nonprofits set up by Congress that support the CDC and the NIH, which together have raised about half a billion dollars in the past five years. The funding troubles point to an even more existential question that outside observers say the foundation is still grappling with: What, exactly, is its real mission? STAT’s Ike Swetlitz has the story here.