Federal health officials have ended two longstanding research programs targeting chronic diseases, even as new U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promotes a nationwide initiative to prevent them.
Gina Kolata reports for The New York Times.
In short:
- The Trump administration terminated $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, including a diabetes grant of $16 million per year supporting a 30-center diabetes research program that was tracking links between diabetes and dementia.
- A 40-year-old pediatric scientist training program was also defunded after its successful 2023 grant renewal cited diversity as a core value — which officials now say fails to align with agency priorities. That has halted research into childhood obesity, asthma, and kidney disease.
- Scientists involved in both programs warn that losing this research pipeline will set back understanding of chronic disease origins and prevention, particularly for vulnerable populations.
Key quote:
“We hope the congressmen and senators might prevail and say: ‘This is crazy. This is chronic disease. This is what you wanted to study.'”
— David M. Nathan, diabetes expert at Harvard Medical School
Why this matters:
Diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and dementia now dominate U.S. health care spending and touch nearly every American family. But just as researchers need more data, not less, several cornerstone long-term studies — like the influential Diabetes Prevention Program — face downsizing or outright cancellation. This rollback is happening even as senior public health leaders, including those in the Biden administration and now in the second Trump presidency, have called for a shift toward prevention and value-based care.
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