Minority Health Grants Biggest Target of NIH Cuts

The Trump administration has terminated a disproportionately high number of research grants from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities during its ideological overhaul of the National Institutes of Health, according to a paper published in Journal of the American Medical Association last week.

The authors of the paper, who include researchers from the medical schools at Yale and Harvard Universities, pulled data from the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System database to identify all grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that have been terminated since President Donald Trump started his second term in January.

Over the past few months, the NIH has terminated hundreds of active research grants, including many focused on LGBTQ+ communities, HIV prevention, vaccine hesitancy and diversity, equity and inclusion, among other topics. However, academics have complained that the government hasn’t provided a comprehensive picture of the scope and scale of the grant terminations.

But the paper JAMA published last week offers fresh insights.

It found that the NIH terminated $1.81 billion in grant funding between Feb. 28 and April 8, 30 percent of which had not been spent at the time of grant termination. That amounted to terminated support for 694 grants across 24 of the 26 institutes and centers, including the Office of the Director, that administered active NIH grants. (No grants administered by the NIH Clinical Center or the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health were terminated.)

The National Institute of Mental Health canceled the most grants—128—of any of the institutes and centers, followed by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which terminated 77. The NIMHD lost the second-highest dollar amount (nearly $223.6 million), after the roughly $506 million terminated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It also had the highest proportion of terminated grants relative to previously active grants (8.9 percent) and the highest share of terminated funding relative to previously active funding (29.6 percent).

The majority (57.6 percent) of all terminated NIH grants were research project grants; 20 percent were early-career grants, 16 percent were other grants and 6.3 percent were center grants.

Of the 210 institutions analyzed, researchers found that the following colleges and universities had the highest numbers of terminated grants: