Minority health researchers walk tightrope amid NIH funding cuts
Read the full article in The Hill
As the Trump administration slashes and transforms the National Institutes of Health (NIH), minority health researchers are walking a tightrope, trying to maintain funding without crossing the vague line into “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) projects.
Researchers told The Hill they are facing unclear research directives, increasingly competitive grant awards and politicized peer review processes as they battle to sustain their work improving health outcomes for minority populations.
“The rules are being changed all the time. The communication is not clear. Study sections [are] getting paused,” said Samira Asgari, a tenure-track assistant professor at the Institute for Genomic Health at Oakland School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “This brings just an environment of lack of stability and uncertainty.”
While many minority health research projects have seen their grants terminated, others managed to scrape by with funding intact. But to financially sustain their research, scientists have sought alternate funding sources or changed their grant application strategies entirely.
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The White House has taken steps to reduce the power of NIH peer-review boards — which usually consist of credentialed scientists — and allow political appointees to exert more influence over which grants are funded.
“How that actually is going to play out is unclear, but it certainly would be different to have much more of a political layer over each grant to make sure that these grants comply with the administration’s priorities,” said Ellie Dehoney, a senior vice president of policy and advocacy at Research!America, a medical and health research advocacy alliance.
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