As a coalition of state attorneys general try to claw back research funding the Trump administration sought to cut, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey stopped at one of the state’s premier research hospitals, describing how it stands to lose out substantially if NIH funding cuts go through.
Just over a month ago, amid multiple moves to cut federal spending, the Trump administration announced plans to slash grant dollars supplied by the NIH – one of the largest biomedical research funding sources in the world.
It supplied around $35 billion in grants alone last year – money that can fund a diverse number of research projects, including pediatric medicine research conducted at facilities like Boston Children’s Hospital, the primary pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School.
However, in February, the NIH claimed a gratuitous amount of grant money awarded last year, including to Harvard, was spent on what’s known as “indirect costs” – expenses that can include rent, utilities and administrative overhead that makes a research project possible.
To combat this, the NIH says, it announced plans to lower the maximum indirect cost rate research institutions can charge the government to 15 percent – way down from the 60 percent some were said to be charging.
For a number of hospitals, university and other facilities, that translates to a sudden, unplanned drop of millions of dollars previously being counted on, causing institutions across the country to drastically cut and revisit how research and other work will get done this year and beyond.
Governor Maura Healey says Boston Children’s Hospital stands to lose a great deal because of the move.
“The NIH cuts are already disrupting medical research and clinical trials. Children's receives, for example, $230 million from NIH funding every year, and they could lose more than half of that funding because of these cuts,” she said during a press conference Monday, following a tour of the campus. “That means halting research into diseases that harm children, ripping away hope from families like the families [First Lady Joanna Lydgate] and I just met upstairs who are facing devastating diagnoses. These cuts are going to cost jobs, they're going to cost lives - young, vulnerable lives. It's not rhetoric, it's not hyperbole: it's a fact.”
Elsewhere in the state, the NIH decision has had a “sobering impact” on facilities like the UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, its leadership says.
According to media reports, the medical school has instituted a hiring freeze and recently rescinded “provisional offers of acceptance” for some PhD program candidates in the wake of NIH news.
Meanwhile, the University of Massachusetts Amherst was said to have at least $10 million tied up due the NIH move, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Like other moves made by the Trump administration to bypass Congress and slash spending, the NIH cuts and freezes are being challenged in court.
Last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced a nationwide preliminary injunction had been put in place via “Massachusetts v. NIH” – an order that Campbell’s office argues prevents cuts to “billions of dollars in funds that support cutting-edge medical and public health research at universities and research institutions across the country.”
However, Healey, a former attorney general, says with funding still not coming through across the board, the consequences are only stacking up.
“What we have heard is that that funding isn’t coming through in all instances, so, already, we have seen an effect - we’ve already seen institutions, colleges and universities here in our state and research programs cut back because of these cuts to NIH funding,” the governor said. “This is a really, really big deal, and right now, we have programs making decisions not to continue with post-doc programs, not to fund research programs, because they’re not going to have the money because of the NIH cuts. That’s a really, really bad thing.”
Last year alone, Massachusetts received some $3.5 billion in funding from the NIH, spread out amongst 6,000 grants, according to the office of U.S. Senator Ed Markey.
The NIH says that at the very least, with the 15 percent caps on indirect spending instituted, it estimates it could save up to $4 billion annually.
