The Republican War On Health Care Continues With Devastating Cuts to Lifesaving Research
Over the last two days, the Trump administration has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants for universities and state agencies around the country studying health issues, including maternal mortality, domestic violence, climate change, HIV, health disparities, immunizations, and more. Trump and his RFK-led HHS also shuttered its Long Covid office, which worked on curing Long Covid and streamlining Covid-related public health efforts, and they froze funding for family planning efforts such as contraception distribution, STD and pregnancy testing, and counseling for infertility. With these new efforts, the Trump administration is not only targeting women, children, people of color, and other marginalized communities, it is hurting universities, axing much-needed life-saving research and medical innovation, and threatening public health. These cuts will dramatically harm the health and well-being of communities nationwide, and they will cost lives.
CNN: ‘People Will Die Based on These Decisions’: Trump Administration Cuts Funding for Dozens of HIV Studies.
- “‘This is just pure chaos and insanity,’ said Kelley, chair of the HIV Medicine Association. The National Institutes of Health canceled two grants last week for HIV projects she was working on, as well as funding for a large HIV clinical trial network she was involved with. ‘It’s just a massive, massive bloodbath,’ Kelley said. The NIH has eliminated funding for dozens of HIV-related research grants, according to a US Department of Health and Human Services database that was updated last week, halting studies and threatening patient care across the country. Several researchers said the cuts put a stop to hopes of ending HIV in the US and around the world.”
Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Plans to Freeze Family-Planning Grants.
- “The freeze, which could be made public as soon as this week, would suspend funding meant to support, in the U.S., pregnancy testing, provision of contraception, treatment of sexually transmitted infections and evaluation and counseling for infertility.”
- “The Department of Health and Human Services distributes the funds under its program known as Title X. The $120 million is roughly half the money available for the program for the year, according to the HHS website. The program gives free or discounted services to about four million people annually through a network of roughly 4,000 clinics.”
NBC: CDC Is Pulling Back $11B in COVID Funding Sent to Health Departments Across the U.S.
- “‘The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,’ HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. ‘HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again…’ The clawed-back funds were largely being used for Covid testing, vaccination, community health workers and initiatives to address Covid health disparities among high-risk and underserved populations, including racial and ethnic minority populations and rural communities, as well as global Covid projects, according to talking points emailed from CDC leadership to agency departments on Tuesday.”
Politico: Long COVID Office ‘Will Be Closing,’ Trump Administration Announces.
- “The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email… The office’s handful of staff were not told whether they would remain employed in the federal government or whether the office would close immediately or wind down operations over time… One HHS employee who works on long Covid, granted anonymity to share details of the move, argued closing the office would not save much money and could cost more over time. Not only could suspending the office’s coordination work lead to overlapping and duplicated efforts, the employee said, but abandoning work that could cure Long Covid means the country’s health care system will have to provide years if not decades of costly care for tens of millions of chronically ill people.”
NOTUS: HHS Pulled Funds for HIV Research at 22 Universities.
- “The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services terminated around 60 federal grants supporting HIV and HIV prevention-related research over the past five weeks, cutting tens of millions in funding for programs spread across nearly two dozen universities and a handful of other institutions. Much of the research focused on population groups most impacted by HIV. Roughly half of the programs centered on Black or Latino populations, who have made up the vast majority of recent HIV infections per estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Others focused on transgender people, a frequent target of this White House. At least one grant focused on preventing HIV in infants and children… ‘The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest,’ the memo reads. ‘The American people have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages.’”
Mother Jones: Domestic Violence and Maternal Mortality Are Rising. The NIH Just Defunded a Project to Study Both.
- “The National Institutes of Health intended to terminate a grant of approximately $400,000 for one of her projects. Fielding-Miller, who researches infectious diseases and gender-based violence, along with some colleagues who do similar work received the funds last fall to support a project focused on training up to a dozen early-career researchers on how to better study intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy. The lead researchers were just about to start recruiting mentees for the year-and-a-half-long program, Fielding-Miller said… ‘Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness,’ the termination letter from the NIH said… Emily Hilliard, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, said: ‘At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science. As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans.’”
AP News: Trump Administration Cancels at Least 68 Grants Focused on LGBTQ Health Questions.
- “Last week the U.S. government terminated at least 68 grants to 46 institutions totaling nearly $40 million when awarded, according to a government website. Some of the grant money has already been spent, but at least $1.36 million in future support was yanked as a result of the cuts, a significant undercount because estimates were available for less than a third of grants. Most were in some way related to sexual minorities, including research focused on HIV prevention. Other canceled studies centered on cancer, youth suicide and bone health… ‘We now no longer have anywhere studying LGBT cancer in the United States,’ said Rosser, who saw his grants canceled on Friday… ‘It’s a loss of a whole generation of science,’ Rosser said.”
STAT: NIH Cuts Halt 24-Year Program to Prevent HIV/Aids in Adolescents and Young Adults.
- “During Donald Trump’s first term, he made it a goal to end the HIV epidemic in the U.S. by 2030. That priority has fallen by the wayside in the second Trump administration, with the termination of a number of grants related to HIV in the past week. Most notable was the sudden withdrawal of $18 million per year for a program dedicated to understanding how to diagnose, treat, and prevent HIV infections and AIDS in adolescents and young adults, who account for about 19% of new infections annually in the U.S. On Friday, the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Intervention was notified that the two major grants that support its operations had been halted by the National Institutes of Health, in a move that legal experts say may be found illegal if it were challenged in court. Researchers say the loss of the program — during the third year of the seven-year grants — would mean ceasing research that could help expand the populations that might benefit from emerging treatments.”
ProPublica: NIH Ends Future Funding to Study the Health Effects of Climate Change.
- “While it’s unclear whether the climate guidance will impact active grants and lead to funding terminations, the directive appears to halt opportunities for future funding of studies or academic programs focused on the health effects of climate change… She called the new guidance ‘catastrophic’ and said it would have a ‘devastating’ impact on much-needed research… The new NIH directive follows the Trump administration’s broader agenda to gut efforts to document and address climate change. Trump has paused billions of dollars of spending on climate-related causes. He has also issued executive orders aimed at increasing the production of fossil fuels and scaling back the government’s efforts to address climate change.”
Roll Call: Trump Cancels NIH Grants on Equity Research.
- “The Trump administration is canceling dozens of National Institutes of Health grants funding health equity research, including work studying Black maternal and fetal health and HIV. Grantees were told in termination notices delivered over the last several days that their project ‘no longer effectuates agency priorities’ and that ‘so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race…’ ‘The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries and ranks 54th for infant mortality,’ said Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine President Sindhu Srinivas. ‘Cutting research funding and critical public health programs that support perinatal care only serves to worsen this problem.’”
Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Over $165 Million in Grants to Arkansas Services to Be Terminated.
- “The list of terminations includes 11 grants to the Arkansas Department of Health totalling $158 million. ‘The referenced funding was supplemental funding in immunizations, health disparities, and epidemiology and laboratory capacity funding,’ said Meg Mirivel, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Health. ‘We always understood these were temporary grants. The ADH is adjusting accordingly and is well equipped to serve Arkansans.’”
The Baltimore Banner: HHS Cuts Millions in Grants to Hopkins and University of Maryland, Baltimore.
- “At least two dozen research grants at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University have been terminated by the federal government in recent weeks amid President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity efforts.”
- “‘We face challenging times for the patients and families that rely on us for cures and treatments, and for the researchers dedicated to the pursuit of improving the health of all Americans,’ Hopkins said in a statement. ‘These are cuts to research that will take away prevention strategies and treatments from American patients facing infectious and chronic diseases.’”