AHA, Health Organizations Request Increased Funding for Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education Program

March 2023

Dear Chair Baldwin, Ranking Member Capito, Chair Aderholt and Ranking Member DeLauro:

The Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) program is the most important federal investment supporting the pediatric physician workforce and access to care for the nation’s children. As groups dedicated to protecting and advancing the health of America’s children, we thank you for your longstanding bipartisan support of CHGME and ask you to provide $738 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 funding for the program, which is critical during the ongoing youth mental health crisis.

We are grateful for Congress’ consistent bipartisan support for the CHGME program, which, over the decades, has enabled children’s hospitals to dramatically increase pediatric physician training and significantly increase the number of pediatricians and pediatric specialists who care for the nation’s children. Each year, CHGME-funded children’s hospitals train thousands of general pediatricians and pediatric specialists like child and adolescent psychiatrists, pediatric surgeons, pediatric cardiologists, dentists, podiatrists and more. As you know, our country is currently facing a national health care workforce shortage, and pediatrics is no different. Your continued support for CHGME is vital to maintaining and strengthening the pediatric physician pipeline.

The CHGME program:

• Supports 1% of all hospitals in the U.S. while training 50% of the nation’s pediatricians and 60% of pediatric specialists.
• Represents just 2% of total federal spending on graduate medical education (GME).
• Supports local pediatric physician workforce with over 2/3 of CHGME-funded physicians staying in the state where they completed their residency.

We are grateful for your work to provide $385 million (the highest level to date) for CHGME in FY 2023 as that gets the program closer to alignment with the residency training funding of other federal programs. CHGME per-resident funding is currently about one-half of per-resident funding provided through other federal training programs. We need your support to boost funding for the CHGME program to help our pediatric patients now and into the future.

Boosting support for the pediatric workforce is even more important as we face the growing challenges of the children’s mental health crisis as well as future respiratory virus surges that will increasingly impact our pediatric health care workforce. CHGME supports the training of the front-line providers who are caring for our children and youth during these emergencies. Additionally, CHGME plays a critical role in combatting the worsening crisis in child and adolescent mental health, by funding the training of 60% of developmental pediatricians and about 40% of all child and adolescent psychiatrists. We cannot continue to fall behind—we must protect children’s access to care.

CHGME is a critical investment in our country’s health care future to help ensure children will have the care they need across provider settings. Again, thank you for your continued leadership in investing in the health care of all children and we urge strong support for the CHGME program with $738 million for FY 2024.

Sincerely,

Academic Pediatric Association
America's Essential Hospitals
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology & Strabismus
American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
American Hospital Association
American Medical Association
American Pediatric Society
American Psychiatric Association
American Psychological Association
Association of American Medical Colleges
Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs
Catholic Health Association of the United States
Children’s Hospital Association
Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy & Action
Exceptional Families of the Military
Family Voices
Federation of American Hospitals
First Focus on Children
National Alliance on Mental Illness
National Association of Behavioral Healthcare
National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
National League for Nursing
Pediatric Policy Council
Premier Inc.
REDC Consortium
The Root Cause Coalition
School-Based Health Alliance
Society for Pediatric Research
Tricare for Kids Coalition
Vizient, Inc
Youth Villages