'Absolutely in a Panic': Trump Admin Axes $63M in Health Grants for RFK Jr.'s Pet Theories

Donald Trump's administration has abruptly cancelled at least 44 US health-care research grants worth a combined $63 million, cutting off funding to projects across the country with almost no warning, according to researchers and a leading health policy group. The move, communicated in boilerplate letters from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, has left scientists who study how Americans receive medical care scrambling to keep staff employed and projects alive.

The letters landed on Wednesday after months of silence from AHRQ, which sits within the Department of Health and Human Services. Researchers had been waiting since the autumn for their usual yearly instalments, but payments never arrived following a 43‑day federal government shutdown last year. Many assumed bureaucratic delays were to blame. Instead, they received near-identical notices informing them their awards were being terminated and that no further funding would be released.

The form letters did not explain why particular grants were being cut. The only justification offered was that AHRQ was adjusting awards 'to better prioritise agency resources' towards areas that 'best serve the interests of the federal government.' That phrasing has done little to reassure those affected.

Aaron Carroll, president of AcademyHealth, a nonpartisan organisation that promotes evidence-based health policy, said his group had tallied at least 44 cancelled grants worth $63 million over the next several years. He described the fallout among researchers as immediate and severe. 'People were caught totally off guard and are absolutely in a panic,' he told Notus, arguing that wildly different projects appeared to have received exactly the same rationale for their cancellation.

An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, leaving it unclear who inside the Trump administration ultimately signed off on the decision, or whether any scientific criteria were applied.

Donald Trump Policy Shift Steers AHRQ Towards RFK Jr Priorities

The letters did, however, outline new priority areas for AHRQ funding, and this is where Trump's broader political alliances begin to show through. Among the themes listed were nutrition, autism and the 'overmedication of children' issues closely associated with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whose long-standing scepticism of aspects of mainstream medicine has drawn widespread criticism from scientists.

Other highlighted topics included telehealth, long Covid, artificial intelligence and antibiotic resistance. The last of these raised eyebrows, because at least one of the cancelled grants was itself focused on tackling antibiotic resistance, calling into question how coherently the new priorities are being applied.

Unlike the far better-known National Institutes of Health, which pours billions into basic biomedical science and potential cures, AHRQ operates on a much smaller budget and a distinct mission. Its grants focus on the 'nuts and bolts' of health care delivery: how hospitals are organised, how patients navigate insurance systems, which interventions actually improve safety and outcomes in real-world settings.

Typical awards range from $300,000 to $3 million, spread over two to five years. The sums are modest in the context of US health spending, but for the individual labs and early-career researchers who rely on them, they often represent the difference between a viable research trajectory and a dead end.

Researchers Say Donald Trump Cuts Threaten Careers And Patients

That vulnerability is now stark. Eric Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Notus he had been leading research into ways to improve care for poorer, older patients who are enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid one of the most expensive and medically complex groups in the US system. When the usual grant instalment failed to materialise after the shutdown, he gradually realised the work was in danger.

'We didn't hear anything after the federal shutdown,' he said. As the weeks dragged on, he laid off a post-doctoral fellow and reassigned other staff to projects supported by different funders. 'We've managed to eke out two papers in the last year but they are truncated,' he added, suggesting key questions would now go unanswered.

AHRQ itself has been operating under strain. The agency was significantly downsized last year as part of broader government reductions under Trump, and researchers say communication from staff tailed off from late 2025. The latest decisions appear to have been signed under AHRQ director Roger Klein, a political appointee who is also working to fill eight vacant seats on the Preventive Services Task Force, an influential panel that decides which preventive services Americans can access at no out-of-pocket cost.

Some of the terminated grants were explicitly designed to support younger academics at a vulnerable point in their careers by covering the salary they would otherwise earn from seeing patients or teaching. Without that cushion, many face an immediate choice between retreating into clinical work or leaving research altogether.

One of them, Dr Nora Becker, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, said her AHRQ award had for three years allowed her to focus primarily on research. Losing it overnight is, in her words, unprecedented. 'I don't know anybody who has ever lost a career development award the way I have,' she said. 'It has introduced a huge amount of stress and uncertainty.'

Her institution has, for now, allowed her to keep a reduced clinical load so she can scramble for alternative grants. But she worries that without the steady backing and time that early-career awards are meant to provide, building the kind of publication record needed for a long-term research career may slip out of reach.

For now, none of the underlying documents suggests the cuts are illegal, and there is no confirmation that individual projects were targeted on ideological grounds. With the Trump administration staying silent, though, those affected are left to interpret a bland reference to 'federal interests' against a backdrop of shifting political priorities and a health system that will be studied less thoroughly than it was a week ago. Everything about the future of these research programmes should therefore be taken with a grain of salt until the government explains, in plain terms, what it intends AHRQ to be.