The Trump administration has formally ended more than 70 active research grants funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, cutting off roughly $185 million in already-approved commitments to study how to improve patient care, reduce medical errors, and address health disparities.
The “nonaward” notices were sent the week of July 13 by AHRQ, a small federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that funds research on the quality and effectiveness of U.S. healthcare. Recipients were informed that their multiyear projects, many of which had already been stalled for months due to frozen funding, would receive no further disbursements.
What was cut
The affected grants cover a broad range of patient-centered outcomes research. Projects include coordinating care for patients with multiple chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure, improving kidney transplantation coordination, reducing delays in diagnosing blood clots, and studying how social barriers like food insecurity and lack of transportation affect health outcomes.
Richard Grant, a primary care physician at Kaiser Permanente whose project on social barriers to care was among those terminated, said the notice was the final blow after a year of waiting. “The email was the final nail in the coffin,” he told Science.
AHRQ’s stated rationale was that the projects did not align with its new priority of “solution-oriented approaches in health disparities research,” a justification Grant found baffling, since his project was explicitly designed to address social barriers to care.
A pattern of disinvestment
The formal termination of these grants is the latest step in a broader dismantling of AHRQ that has been underway since 2025. The agency has lost much of its staff through cuts and attrition. All of its open grant competitions have been cancelled. Funds have been frozen since the fall of 2025, forcing many research teams to halt their work long before the official notices arrived.
Aaron Carroll, CEO of AcademyHealth, a nonprofit tracking the nonaward notices, said the move defies logic. “This does not make sense,” Carroll said. “[Funding] was passed by both houses of this Congress, signed by the current president of the United States. If I were Congress, I’d be livid.”
Congress, controlled by Republicans at the time of the FY2026 budget, approved $345 million for AHRQ. The administration is declining to spend funds it was legally appropriated.
Semantics and legal challenges
An HHS spokesperson disputed the characterization of the action as “terminations,” saying: “The grants were not terminated. They were not awarded continued funding.”
Scott Delaney, a grant oversight expert, called the distinction disingenuous. “Nonaward notices are terminations in different clothes,” he said. “They were really bad at terminating grants in a lawful way last year.”
A lawsuit was already filed in August 2025 by physician groups seeking to force disbursement of unspent FY2025 funds. The formal nonaward notices may now provide legal grounds for additional lawsuits seeking restoration of the terminated grants.
Elisabeth Uphoff Kato, a former AHRQ deputy director, characterized the agency’s treatment as “effectively dismantling” a federal research enterprise that, despite its small budget, has produced some of the most directly actionable findings in American medicine, from checklists that reduced hospital infection rates to protocols that cut diagnostic errors in emergency rooms.
Sources
- Science AAAS: “Trump administration ends dozens of grants for studying patient care” (July 17, 2026)
- Quoted: Richard Grant (Kaiser Permanente), Aaron Carroll (AcademyHealth), Scott Delaney, Elisabeth Uphoff Kato (former AHRQ deputy director)