At least 67 grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have been cut as of Friday evening, according to the advocacy group.
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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality told several grant recipients this week that they will not receive continued funding for previously awarded projects, cutting dollars for ongoing efforts to improve America’s health care system by researching and training new scientists and doctors.
Spokesmen for the Department of Health and Human Services, including AHRQ, did not return interviews or respond to multiple written inquiries Friday as of Within Higher Edincluding how much funding the agency has denied. As of early Friday afternoon, AcademyHealth, which represents health services and health policy researchers, said it had collected data on 67 cut grants, which lost about $97 million in “remaining committed funding,” as the group put it.
“Everything Americans hate about health care is what this study focuses on,” said Aaron Carroll, AcademyHealth president and chief executive officer. “Do you think health care is too expensive in the United States? Does it really upset you? That’s the AHRQ. Do you think it’s too hard to get in to see a doctor? The wait times are too long? That’s the AHRQ.”
Timothy Beebe, a professor of health care management at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, said he was denied $3 million of an expected $5 million grant over five years that helps train scientists to quickly bring evidence-based practices to patient care and discard expensive and ineffective treatments.
“I don’t see a way to continue without this grant support,” Beebe said, adding that he fears “we’re going to lose a generation of scholars who are in a position to change the nature of the health care delivery system — where we’re spending too much on health care without much return on investment.”
Early last month, Republican House representatives proposed ending AHRQ’s funding. The cancellation also underscores that the Trump administration is continuing to disrupt research funding, even before the White House Office of Management and Budget has finalized its proposed rule that would provide legal grounds for cutting grants.
In an email to Within Higher EdHHS has disputed that this is a termination of the grants, suggesting instead that they are not being renewed. But Carroll said, “I don’t understand the confusion about semantics.”
“When you’re in the middle of nowhere, you expect funding to come, but they don’t.” [provide funding] and I told you to stop … you could choose a different word than ‘termination,’ but it will end,” Carroll said. He also said that the researchers and the nation are losing more than just continued funding that has been denied.
“If you’ve started a major course and you’ve spent, say, $2 [million] $5 million for it and you registered patients, that is now wasted,” he said.
In an email to Within Higher EdHHS stated, “AHRQ has determined that certain non-competitive continuation grants and jointly sponsored grants will not receive continuation awards.” The agency typically provides grant recipients with continued funding each year until the grant expires, Carroll said.
“It’s rare for them to be eliminated,” Carroll said. “It happens, but very, very rarely, and almost always for specific reasons that everyone will know and understand. You won’t wonder why.”
HHS said Within Higher Ed that “under the law, the Director of AHRQ must determine whether continued funding is in the interest of the federal government.” But it did not explain why the cut grants were not in the federal government’s best interest, or what that phrase meant. (The undefined term “national interest” also appears in OMB’s proposed rule.) HHS also did not provide a list of the canceled grants.
The phrase “the best interest of the federal government” appeared in four grant termination letters researchers received this week and were awarded Within Higher Ed.
None of the literature provides much detail as to why AHRQ is ending grants. Another states, shortly after referring to the “best interests of the federal government,” that “the grant program, and the funding contract” that supported it, “have been canceled on this basis, resulting in a lack of funding.”
The other three don’t have that, but they include an additional category.
“AHRQ’s current priorities include focusing agency resources on patient safety, preventing antibiotic resistance, telehealth, pediatric overuse, use of digital health tools to improve health, long-term COVID, artificial intelligence, nutrition, advancing understanding of autism, promoting research focused on scientific validity, measurable health outcomes and approaches to addressing health disparities,” AHR said. its portfolio of health services research awards to better prioritize the agency’s resources on the above-mentioned priorities.”
But Carroll said that assumption doesn’t make sense, because many of the grants that have been canceled, including one for antibiotic resistance, fall on that priority list.
