The novel legislation would support grants and loans for Long COVID research and development, building on an existing state program.
Maryland may soon become the first U.S. state to directly support Long COVID research and development. The state’s government is considering a bill that would establish a grant and loan program dedicated to the disease, potentially funding scientists and start-ups based in Maryland.
Lawmakers in both Maryland’s House of Delegates and Senate are set to discuss the bill, called HB0027 in the House and SB0392 in the Senate, next week, with hearings scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday. It has garnered interest from advocates for Long COVID and related chronic diseases as well as entrepreneurs; people from both groups plan to submit testimony in its favor.
While the bill itself doesn’t allocate government funding to Long COVID research, it uses existing infrastructure in the state to create a system for distributing potential gifts from private donors. If the legislation is successful, lawmakers may also consider adding funding to it in the state budget, Cheryl Lohman, a leading advocate behind the bill, told The Sick Times.
The bill both “supports the current ecosystem of entrepreneurs” developing products for Long COVID and “sends signals to other players within the ecosystem that [infection-associated chronic conditions (IACCs)] is a category worth building and investing in,” said Ibrahim Rashid, an impact investor who advocates for funders to support Long COVID projects following his own experience with the disease.
“Long COVID research has not been sufficiently funded; this bill aims to change that,” said Delegate Greg Wims, the bill’s lead sponsor in the House, in a statement to The Sick Times. “I hope that from the best and the brightest companies in Maryland doing this research, the development of a treatment for this elusive illness will soon follow.”
I hope that from the best and the brightest companies in Maryland doing this research, the development of a treatment for this elusive illness will soon follow.
Delegate Greg Wims
The bill would direct an existing Maryland institution, the Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO), to set up a Long COVID grant program. TEDCO is a private-public partnership founded by the state government in 1998.
“The state of Maryland has a superpower, and it’s called TEDCO,” Lohman said. The corporation has supported a wide range of biomedical technologies, from a factory manufacturing algae to a device that stops nosebleeds, and regularly helps companies raise funding.
Lohman has lived with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) for many years. “I’ve been through the illness, the uncertainty, the devastation it causes to your life,” she said.
She worked with a TEDCO staffer on the bill’s text, which she originally modeled after similar legislation directing the corporation to support stem cell research. Several state lawmakers have since championed the bill, including Delegate Wims, Senator Nancy King, and Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk — the current speaker of the house, whom Lohman knows personally.
Advocates at Solve ME, which has helped publicize the bill, were “impressed by previous state-based efforts in other disease spaces (STEM cells, HIV, diabetes, etc.) that have yielded strong scientific progress,” wrote Emily Taylor, the organization’s CEO, in a statement. The legislation could fund research that benefits people with ME, POTS, and other IACCs alongside Long COVID, she said.
Entrepreneurs working to address Long COVID and IACCs are excited about the bill, too. Some start-ups seeking to help people with these diseases have struggled to find funding that helps them expand after initial successes, Rashid said. This bill could “support founders to scale up their businesses.”
The legislation “creates a place for entrepreneurs to develop, test, and refine innovations such as care models, digital tools, wearables, diagnostics, and recovery programs,” said Eve Bowers, a primary care physician and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who cares for people with IACCs, and co-founder of the platform CompendiRx.
The proposed grant program “would be powerful validation” of the scale of the Long COVID crisis and potential inspiration to other funders and government agencies, Bowers said. “Practically, it would make it easier to partner with Maryland clinics, researchers, and payers to pilot and scale solutions.”
The bill itself does not include dedicated funding in part because Maryland is currently facing a budget deficit, so legislation with a price tag is unlikely to pass in this spring’s session, Delegate Wims explained in an interview with The Sick Times. But the proposed program could spur investment from private companies and donors, and potentially receive state funding later, he said.
As the federal government has cut Long COVID programs and threatened health funding across many areas, some advocates, like Lohman, have looked to state agencies as other avenues for change. She recommended that other advocates interested in pursuing similar legislation consider their state’s unique strengths, as she did with TEDCO in Maryland.
“The bill’s progress is a testimony to the tenacity and skills of the local Maryland ME advocacy community,” Taylor, from Solve ME, wrote. “I think it will be a beacon to other states and definitely a successful implementation of our strategies that we aim to replicate.”
Minnesota is another state leader in addressing Long COVID, with a program run out of the health department that retained its funding following advocacy last year. Its program has also supported grants, but those focused on healthcare and community organizations rather than scientific research and product development.
Several other state health agencies have also studied Long COVID and helped communicate about the disease, but federal funding supporting some of these projects was cut last spring under a Trump administration order.
Community members interested in supporting the bill can submit written testimony explaining what it would mean for them. Lohman emphasized that supporters do not need to be based in Maryland, though anyone who is in the state and has the capacity for on-site advocacy can sign up to testify at the statehouse. She has also written a petition that supporters can sign.
Lawmakers will discuss the bill in two hearings next week: one in the House of Delegates’ Health committee, on Tuesday, February 10, starting at 2 p.m. ET, and one in the Senate’s Finance committee, on Thursday, February 12, starting at 1 p.m. ET.
Supporters can submit testimony for the House hearing on Friday, February 6, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET, and for the Senate hearing on Tuesday, February 10, during the same time window. People with an account on the Maryland General Assembly website can also mark that they support the bill by marking their position as “favorable,” without writing testimony.
There will likely be a verdict on the legislation before the Maryland legislative session ends on April 13. The Long COVID bill has a leg up because it’s already under consideration in both chambers, Lohman said.
After the hearings, the bill will be directed to subcommittees in both the House and Senate who will consider the proposal in greater detail, Delegate Wims said. He aims to move the bill quickly through the legislative process.
Lohman would like to see community members use their testimony to educate policymakers who may be unaware of Long COVID, even though the disease affects tens of millions of Americans. Testimony could help them understand that “there is a need in the marketplace for diagnostics, treatments and cures,” and “the need is not just local to Maryland, but national and international in scope,” she said.
There is a need in the marketplace for diagnostics, treatments and cures, and need is not just local to Maryland, but national and international in scope.
Cheryl Lohman, advocate behind the bill
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