Which NIH research areas saw the largest drops in new awards during the Trump administration’s funding changes?
Executive summary
An analysis of reporting finds the largest documented drops in new NIH awards concentrated in infectious disease and minority-health portfolios, with major hits to cancer programs and fetal-tissue research also prominent in the coverage; these losses came from a mix of terminated awards, frozen funds and fewer new awards issued under White House policies and administrative slowdowns [1] [2] [3] [4]. The evidence in the reporting is strong about which institutes and topics were hardest hit, but the sources do not provide a single comprehensive numerical breakdown of "new awards by research area" across the whole agency, so some quantification must be read from institute-level tallies and investigative tallies [2] [3] [5].
1. The standout losers: infectious disease and minority‑health funding
Multiple outlets report that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) experienced the largest initial terminations and freezes of NIH money — more than $505 million and $223 million, respectively, in the first wave of cuts — making infectious‑disease work and minority‑health programs among the most sharply reduced in new and continuing awards [1].
2. Cancer research took headline damage but the picture is mixed
Investigations and data-driven trackers highlighted high‑profile losses to cancer research, including a frozen $77 million award to a major cancer center and warnings of a “dramatic drop” at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that could reduce principal investigators and staff, indicating that cancer programs saw substantial interruptions in new and ongoing awards [2] [6].
3. Fetal‑tissue research and selected sensitive topics saw steep, targeted declines
NIH-supported research using human fetal tissue has been in decline since 2019 and was singled out for renewed and explicit policy curbs under the administration, with the agency reporting a drop in funding for such projects relative to prior highs (from $115 million in 2018 down to $53 million in FY2024), marking fetal‑tissue science as a specific area with reduced new award activity [4].
4. Overall drop in new awards and high‑risk grants across the agency
Broad analyses of NIH’s award data show fewer new awards overall — STAT’s analysis of almost 750,000 grants found the number of awards between January and September fell 11.6% relative to the prior year and 8.2% versus the nine‑year average — and reporters also documented a reduction in high‑risk, high‑reward grants intended to seed novel ideas, signaling declines in new awards across many fields, not only a few pockets [3].
5. Causes, counterclaims and legal pushback that complicate attribution
Reporting attributes the drops to a combination of policies (indirect‑cost caps and anti‑DEI and anti‑fetal‑tissue directives), mass terminations and administrative slowdowns, including frozen grant meetings and staff cuts that left NIH behind in spending by billions, yet the administration framed changes as reprioritization toward chronic‑disease and efficiency goals; courts and lawsuits have blocked some measures (such as the 15% overhead cap) and forced review of delayed applications, muddying the timeline of which areas will ultimately lose new awards permanently versus temporarily [7] [6] [8] [5] [9] [10].
6. What the reporting does not allow — and why that matters
While journalists and trackers document many high‑profile institute losses and aggregate drops in award counts and dollars, none of the supplied sources delivers a single, centralized, fully disaggregated table of “new awards by specific research topic” before versus after the policy changes; therefore the strongest conclusions rely on institute‑level tallies (NIAID, NIMHD, NCI), investigative tallies of terminations and frozen funds, and analyses of overall award volumes rather than a complete itemized ranking of every NIH research area by percent drop [2] [3] [1].
7. Bottom line: who to watch and why
The clearest reporting consensus is that infectious‑disease research (NIAID), minority‑health programs (NIMHD) and cancer programs (NCI), plus explicitly targeted areas such as fetal‑tissue research, suffered the largest documented drops in awards and funding activity; broader reductions in award counts and in high‑risk grant lines indicate systemic effects across NIH, but precise rank‑ordering beyond those named institutes is not available in the cited reporting [1] [2] [3] [4].