Donald Trump's administration has abruptly cancelled at least 44 US health-care research grants worth a combined $63 million, cutting off funding to projects across the country with almost no warning, according to researchers and a leading health policy group. The move, communicated in boilerplate letters from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, has left scientists who study how Americans receive medical care scrambling to keep staff employed and projects alive.
The letters landed on Wednesday after months of silence from AHRQ, which sits within the Department of Health and Human Services. Researchers had been waiting since the autumn for their usual yearly instalments, but payments never arrived following a 43‑day federal government shutdown last year. Many assumed bureaucratic delays were to blame. Instead, they received near-identical notices informing them their awards were being terminated and that no further funding would be released.
