HHS Research Agency Terminates Dozens of Health Services Grants, Halting Patient Care Studies Nationwide
Key Insights
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (search) (AHRQ) has terminated at least 67 multiyear health research grants, canceling $63 million in remaining research funding.
Termination notices cited shifting priorities to areas including overmedication of children, autism (search), and long COVID (search), though several canceled grants aligned with those stated priorities.
Researchers report layoffs, halted patient recruitment, and the loss of early-career scientist training programs as immediate consequences of the funding cuts.
The Trump administration this week terminated dozens of health research grants at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (search), abruptly halting studies on patient care delivery, antibiotic stewardship, and health system improvement that had already been underway for years.
At least 67 grants—a significant share of the agency's portfolio—have been canceled as of Friday, according to AcademyHealth (search), a professional organization for health services researchers. The number is expected to rise as additional reports of cancellations come in. The terminated grants represent approximately $63 million in remaining research dollars that recipients were due over the next several years.
"Tens of millions of dollars have already been invested in these projects," said Aaron E. Carroll, president and CEO of AcademyHealth (search). "People have been hired. Patients have been recruited. Lots of work is going on, and all of that is now wasted."
Months of Silence End with Mass Termination
The cuts follow nearly a year of funding delays that began in late 2025. AHRQ, which receives about $345 million annually from Congress—roughly 0.3% of HHS discretionary appropriations—has not spent any of its funding in fiscal 2026. Grantees typically receive their funds in annual installments, but many had not received payments since last summer.
"We didn't hear anything after the federal shutdown," said Eric T. Roberts, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, referring to the 43-day period last fall when the government went without funding. Roberts had been leading research on improving care for people dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, a population that accounts for roughly one-third of spending in the two programs.
In termination notices reviewed by CQ Roll Call, the agency wrote that projects were being ended to "better prioritize agency resources," listing priority areas including patient safety, preventing antibiotic resistance, telehealth, overmedication of children, use of digital health tools, long COVID (search), artificial intelligence, nutrition, autism (search), and health disparities research.
However, several terminated grants appear to align with those stated priorities. Funding was canceled, for example, for a randomized trial focused on antibiotic stewardship across 40 hospitals, according to AcademyHealth (search).
"What concerns us most is very different projects appear to have received the same rationale for their cancellations," Carroll said.
Immediate Impact on Researchers and Patients
The terminations have forced layoffs and the shutdown of programs already in progress. Roberts said a postdoctoral researcher working on his project had to be laid off and the program wound down just as it was preparing to study changes made by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
"This has been a slow-moving disaster for the research community," Roberts said.
Nora Becker, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School whose salary had largely been funded by an AHRQ grant for the past three years, said the loss of her career development award has introduced "a huge amount of stress and uncertainty."
"I don't know anybody who has ever lost a career development award the way I have," Becker said.
Training Pipeline at Risk
The terminations raise significant concerns about the future pipeline of health services researchers—scientists who study how care is delivered, accessed, and paid for, with the goal of improving patient safety, outcomes, and health system efficiency.
Dr. Stephen W. Patrick, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University, received a termination letter for the department's five-year training grant, which has not received funding since last summer. The university is supporting current trainees but will not be able to accept new ones.
"These training grants are designed to train the next generation of researchers in this space," Patrick said.
At the University of Minnesota, the Learning Health System Embedded Scientist Training Program—a $5 million, five-year grant—has also been terminated. One product of that program was a tool using electronic health record data to more quickly identify clinical risk markers for the early detection of bipolar disorder (search).
"We're losing a generation of very innovative scientists that really could address all the challenges we know to be replete in the health care delivery system," said Tim Beebe, a professor of health care management at the University of Minnesota.
An HHS spokesperson drew a distinction between terminating grants and not awarding continuation funding, stating that "under statute, the AHRQ Director must determine whether continuation funding is in the best interest of the federal government," and that certain noncompeting continuation grants and jointly funded grants would not receive continuation awards.