WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services has stopped nearly $122 million in grants to research deemed a poor use of taxpayer funds due to focus on LGBT topics and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), The Post has learned.
The grants, funding 195 different projects, were determined by the Trump administration to focus too narrowly on sexual or racial minority groups — drawing outrage from some holdover officials from the Biden administration and contributing to at least one high-profile resignation this week.
The precise savings are difficult to calculate due to the fact that some awards were partially dispensed and often span multiple years. Most of the grants were scrapped in March in cooperation with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but others were canceled as recently as this month.
Among the biggest grants to be axed was $5.5 million from the National Cancer Institute to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for the “Vanderbilt FIRST” initiative that aims to “recruit at least 18 tenure-track faculty from minoritized [sic] racial and ethnic groups,” according to data reviewed by The Post.
The prestigious Nashville, Tenn., university has an endowment of more than $10 billion — ranked among America’s top 20 — but said the funds were needed to “identify and eliminate organizational barriers that impede full participation, advancement, and thriving of racially diverse faculty in academia.”
Drexel University, a less wealthy but still well-regarded Philadelphia institution, similarly received more than $4.6 million from the National Cancer Institute for “Catalyzing Systemic Change at Drexel University to Support Diverse Faculty in Health Disparities Research.”
The project abstract says the money would be used by Drexel for “mentoring and supporting diverse early-stage faculty dedicated to health disparities research.”
Also getting the chop was a $2.4 million grant to the University of Virginia from the National Institute of Mental Health for studying “Neurodevelopmental Biomarkers of Late Diagnosis in Female and Gender Diverse Autism” — part of a larger endowment totaling $12 million announced by UVA in 2022.
The University of Michigan, meanwhile, lost a $1.1 million grant from the National Institute on Aging for “Improving Inclusivity of Alzheimers [sic] Disease and Related Dementias Research for Asian Americans and Latinx through Nationally Representative Hybrid Sampling.”
More than $8 million was halted that would have gone to Case Western University’s Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative of Northern Ohio Catalyzing Linkages to Equity in Health (CLE Health), which listed its primary goal as “understand[ing] the fundamental barriers to optimal recruitment of underrepresented groups in clinical trials and test and scale interventions aimed at breaking down these barriers.”
More than $3.4 million was stripped from the University of California at San Francisco, which had been awarded the funds by the National Institute on Aging for the research project “Asian Americans & Racism: Individual and Structural Experiences (ARISE),” which proposed studying the prevalence of racism affecting 1,500 Asian-American senior citizens.
“The scientific promise of ARISE is timely and necessary, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated anti-Asian racism,” the researchers said.
The topics of the affected studies ranged from the mundane to zany.
Nearly $208,000 in reclaimed grant money was meant for the University of Washington for a study on “Adapting an Intervention to Reduce Intersectional Stigmas among Indigenous Sexual Minority Men and Traditional Healers in Mesoamerica,” funded by the National Institute of Health’s Fogarty International Center.
One researcher’s CV says a goal was to “address intersectional stigmas experienced by Indigenous [gay and bisexual men] in Guatemala [with a goal of] increasing HIV testing, PrEP uptake, PrEP/ART adherence, and decreasing experiences of stigma and discrimination.”
The researchers did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking information on the traditional healers component of the study.
Another $576,000 was retracted from Loyola Marymount University’s study of the “Feasibility and Effectiveness of Gamified Digital Intervention to Prevent Alcohol and Mental Health Risks.”
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism had given about $3.2 million in two different grants to the same researcher, according to a 2023 release from the university, the largest tranche for a study on the “Feasibility and Effectiveness of Gamified Digital Intervention to Prevent Alcohol and Mental Health Risks among Sexual Minority Women.”
Boston Medical Center, meanwhile, was zeroed out after being due $31,691 for research “[a]ssessing the burden of dementia in transgender populations.”
Some of the projects that were torpedoed featured studies of well-known health conditions that disproportionately impact minority groups, such as a University of Minnesota study of “HPV Oropharyngeal cancer and screening in Gay and Bisexual Men” (due to receive $350,000), and a related “Randomized Controlled Trial of an HPV Vaccine Intervention for Young Sexual Minority Men” at Ohio State University ($490,000).
About $275,000 was meant for a study on “Integrated Alcohol and Sexual Assault Prevention for Bisexual Women” at Rhode Island Hospital. A project summary said it focused on bisexual women specifically because they “report higher rates of heavy episodic drinking compared to heterosexual women, as well as higher rates of sexual assault compared to heterosexual or lesbian women.”
Also axed was $814,000 for a study at Columbia University, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, that featured “[a] daily diary examination of the influence of intersectional stigma on blood pressure.”
A more detailed description of the project said it would analyze the impact on blood pressure of “vicarious” discrimination on racial and sexual minorities, meaning “hearing/witnessing people like you being the target of discrimination,” and assessing useful “moderators (e.g., social support, identity centrality).”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis resigned Wednesday as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, citing broad disagreements with the new leadership at HHS and the decision to “terminate key research to support equity” — following the firing of Dr. Susan Monarez, the recently Senate-confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About a dozen grant recipients contacted by The Post did not respond to requests for comment.
Rich Danker, HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said the data demonstrate that “under the Trump administration, the NIH’s medical research once again serves all Americans, and will no longer be co-opted for political agendas such as DEI.”
