Are you thinking about a job in the health care industry? If so, now is the best time to get involved! President Obama’s economic stimulus plan is to set to create thousands of jobs in the health industry, giving researchers billions of dollars to help fight life-threatening diseases.

President Obama said recently that scientific research is a job-creating engine. In order to create more jobs, bolster the economy, and fight disease, the President initiated a $5 billion government grant to go towards finding cures for cancer, autism, and heart disease.

President Obama’s emphasis on medical research means that the country will need many more allied health professionals! Whether you’re looking to interact directly with patients by becoming a nurse or a dialysis technician, or want to work behind the scenes as a pharmacy technician, the President is working to make sure that health is a priority in America.

Obama describes the grant as a critical part of economic recovery, as well as improving public health. After his visit to the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the President says that the Institute’s projects help illustrate the goals of his $787 billion stimulus bill—namely, rescuing the economy and creating a more stable future.

“The American people are looking forward to the next set of discoveries that you are working on today,” Obama told employees.

Jared Bernstein, who is the chief economist for Vice President Biden, said that the $5 billion grant will support an estimated 12,000 existing health projects and create thousands of jobs over the next two years for researchers, educators, and medical equipment makers and suppliers.

President Obama called the grant the “single largest boost to biomedical research in history.”

$175 million will be invested in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which will collect more than 20,000 tissue samples from more than 20 different types of cancers. The goal of the project would be to determine the genetic changes in the tumor samples so that researchers would be able to locate the source of the cancer.

The cancer study involves more than 150 scientists at dozens of health and medical institutions around country. However, the tricky part of medical research is that the grant money does not guarantee success. “We can’t know where this research will lead. That’s the nature of science,” said NIH director, Dr. Francis Collins.