Since last fall, researchers studying how health care is delivered to Americans have anxiously awaited their next installment of grant funding
On Wednesday, after months of silence from the government, they learned the funding — and the rest of their grant dollars — won’t be coming at all
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a small agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that funds research into how patients receive care, sent boilerplate letters to dozens of grant recipients saying their awards would no longer be funded
The letter, which NOTUS reviewed, gave no specific reasons individual grants were being ended
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“People were caught totally off guard and are absolutely in a panic,” said Aaron Carroll, president of AcademyHealth, a nonpartisan organization that advances evidence-based health policy
The agency terminated at least 44 grants, canceling $63 million in remaining research dollars that recipients were due over the next few years, according to a tally by AcademyHealth
The only explanation given was that the AHRQ is adjusting grant awards “to better prioritize agency rel government.”
The letters listed some of those priorities, which include Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s favorite topics, such as nutrition, autism and “overmedication of children,” as well as telehealth, long COVID and artificial intelligence. It also listed antibiotic resistance — which was the subject of at least one of the grants that was canceled
“What concerns us most is very different projects appear to have received the same rationale for their cancellations,” Carroll said
An HHS spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment
Unlike the National Institutes of Health, which bankrolls biomedical research in search of cures, the AHRQ manages a far smaller budget focused on researching the nuts and bolts of how health care in the U.S. actually works
Grantees study topics like the consolidation of doctor practices and hospitals, patient education on substance abuse, or how to prevent hospital-acquired infections. The grants typically range from $300,000 to $3 million over two to five years
Researchers told NOTUS they had started to wonder about the future of their grants when they didn’t receive any payments from the government this year. Grantees typically receive their funds in annual installments. They said staff at AHRQ, which was significantly downsized last year amid government reductions, was largely uncommunicative starting late in 2025
“We didn’t hear anything after the federal shutdown,” said University of Pennsylvania professor Eric Roberts, referring to when the government went 43 days without funding last fall
Roberts had been leading research on how to improve care for poorer, older people enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid, a highly expensive population. As the weeks passed and his doubt rose, he laid off a post-doctoral fellow and moved other researchers to projects funded by other grants
“We’ve managed to eke out two papers in the last year but they are truncated,” Roberts said
AHRQ is led by political appointee Roger Klein, who is working to fill eight vacant positions on the Preventive Services Task Force, a key advisory panel that determines which preventive services millions of Americans can get for free
Some terminated grants aimed to help younger people establish research careers by replacing the income they’d otherwise need to generate by seeing patients or teaching classes
One of those is Nora Becker, whose salary as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School had largely been funded by an AHRQ grant for the past three years so she could focus on research
She said her bosses have allowed her to keep limiting how many patients she sees so she can apply for other research grants to replace the lost funding. But she worries this spells the end of her chances at becoming a researcher — a career that is difficult to build, especially in the early stages without a body of work
“I don’t know anybody who has ever lost a career development award the way I have,” Becker said. “It has introduced a huge amount of stress and uncertainty.”
