The Department of Health and Human Services is terminating a National Institutes of Health grant program that supports students from marginalized backgrounds in the biomedical sciences.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the elimination of the program — the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program — in a document posted to the Federal Register Monday. Kennedy cited the program’s failure to comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders that prevent federal agencies from supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion-related activities.
Experts say that the termination of the program, which provided everything from funding for undergraduates’ lab salaries to mentorship from senior investigators, could close off scientific careers for individuals who wouldn’t otherwise have access to research opportunities.
“Cutting of these programs means that an entire generation of students will end up being lost to science,” Rochelle Newman, a psychologist at the University of Maryland who received a grant from the program, told STAT. “Those are students who, as scientists, would be creating the discoveries that will enhance health and our way of life in the future.”
The move — which follows anecdotal reports that grant proposals for the program were no longer being considered — is the latest blow to the current state of federal research funding. Just last Thursday, the Supreme Court greenlit the Trump administration’s cut of over $780 million in NIH research grants associated with DEI efforts.
Newman used a grant from the program to increase undergraduate students’ opportunities to gain science-based training. Undergraduate research experience is necessary to apply for graduate school in the life sciences, but such internships are often unpaid. That can limit those vital experiences to only students who have the funds available, Newman said.
Her program sought to bridge that gap by providing an hourly wage to college students during the school year and summer, in addition to mentorship and professional development opportunities.
“Rather than our program being biasing, it’s really designed exactly the opposite: to help address biases that already exist in our current system,” Newman said. She added that while the grants do support individuals who are underrepresented because of race and ethnicity, they also fund those who are disadvantaged due to financial hardship or who have disabilities.
Newman has not yet heard anything from the NIH about her grant. She does not know whether the program’s termination will impact her program or just future programs with similar goals.
STAT reached out to HHS officials for comment but did not receive a response.
For Charles Shuster, a biologist at New Mexico State University, the timing of the program’s termination is particularly alarming. Shuster is a co-director of his university’s “G-RISE program,” which is funded by the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program and supports biomedical doctoral students by paying their stipends and partially covering tuition, health care, and child care.
The cancellation of the federal program at the beginning of the academic year means that G-RISE needs to independently find financial support for its students for the remaining 14 weeks of the semester.
“It’s one thing to let the grant run through its grant year. It’s another thing to yank money in the middle of the grant cycle,” Shuster said. “Commitments have already been made, and to all of a sudden have eight or 10 graduate students needing stipend support — that will be a hardship.”
The move could also leave early-career researchers who relied on mentorship made possible by the federal program to navigate the academic world without a support structure, according to Fatima Stanford, an obesity medicine physician-scientist at Mass General Brigham.
“Individuals that may have had sustained mentorship or sustained support are really left in a boat without a paddle,” Stanford said. “Who do they go to at this point? Do they change careers? What if they’re in the middle of a grant application?”
The loss of support structures, Stanford added, will result in a mass exodus of individuals who could have been leaders in the field from academia. It will also affect the future of the U.S. scientific workforce, according to Donna Ginther, an economist and director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research at the University of Kansas.
The termination of the program will additionally exacerbate existing inequalities in the distribution of NIH funds, Stanford said. Individuals who are from underrepresented backgrounds are less likely to be funded by the agency, a reality partly driven by research topics. That issue will only grow with cancellations of initiatives like the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program, she added.
Stanford pointed to several NIH initiatives, including a high school research apprenticeship and loan repayment program, that put her on the trajectory to becoming the researcher and clinician she is today.
“Not having programs like this program — particularly as a Black woman physician-scientist — will make it such that there are fewer investigators that come from these backgrounds,” she said. “I’m concerned about what the future looks like.”
