In the wake of Trump’s announcement of budget cuts for the National Institute of Health (NIH), which provides millions of dollars in medical research grants, Georgetown faculty have faced uncertainty and a lack of information about when or how their own projects may be affected. A Massachusetts federal judge paused the cuts earlier this month, though a permanent decision about their legality has not yet been made.
During Fiscal Year 2024, Georgetown received more than $57 million from the NIH, divided across 138 awards. The majority of awards range between $300,000 and $500,000.
The cuts, first announced on Feb. 7 and implemented on Feb. 9, aim to reduce the proportion of grant money allocated for so-called “indirect costs” to 15% of each award. Indirect costs include money for facilities and administrative work that supports research projects. Georgetown’s projects currently have an indirect cost rate of between 25 and 26%, and the university itself supplements NIH grants with additional funds.
The Trump administration announced the cuts as a method of addressing overspending, but Dr. Adam Koon, a professor in the School of Health who studies health policy, told the Voice that indirect costs are necessary for running research projects in the first place.
“Indirect charges are a large percentage of the grant, and they cover things that you don’t want to list, like the administrators who are never touching the research or the grant, or maybe help payroll,” Koon said. “They’ll pay for maintenance, the lab space, the electricity—they might pay for the Wi-Fi connection. There are all these invisible costs that it takes to run research in the background.”
Dr. Emily Mendenhall, a professor in the School of Foreign Service who researches public health, explained that sudden upheavals in NIH funding could be dangerous for participants in long-term medical experiments.
“When funding was stripped away so suddenly, it made it difficult for scientists to continue their work. This includes oversight, like checking in on people taking essential medicines. By absolutely cutting off aid, it will literally put people’s lives at risk—immediately and in the long-term,” Mendenhall said.
Dr. Carlos Mendes de Leon, a researcher in the Department of Oncology at the Georgetown School of Medicine, studies health changes later in life, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. He currently has a grant from the NIH; however, his projects are largely located abroad, in Lebanon and Nepal.
Mendes de Leon said he had not yet received any information about whether his projects would be affected by the cuts, though expects that there may be changes in the near future. He said that the lack of information could itself be problematic.
“We need to be prepared for these cuts so that we don’t over-promise what we can deliver down the road,” Mendes de Leon said.
Two additional professors with NIH grants declined the Voice’s requests for comment on the cuts because they are not sure the implications of the cuts or how their work might be impacted.
Mendenhall, who has also worked outside of the U.S., said that the work the NIH funds can be beneficial to American foreign relations, adding that it impacts not only people in the country, but also Americans living abroad.
“International aid projects serve the American people in winning hearts and minds. This care has done a lot to make us friends and allies,” Mendenhall said.
For example, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has invested billions of dollars in AIDS relief and prevention since 2003, primarily across Africa. The program has been cited as a method of strengthening relationships between the U.S. and the partner countries. Although PEPFAR receives the majority of its main funding from USAID, an agency that the Trump administration has largely shut down, the NIH has funded much of the research PEPFAR has used to fight AIDS.
Shortly after the Trump administration announced the new NIH policy, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled to temporarily halt the cuts on Feb. 10. Initially, this pause affected the 22 states who had joined the lawsuit, though it was later expanded to protect all U.S. research institutions—including Georgetown. An additional hearing on Feb. 21 extended the pause, though a permanent decision has not yet been made.
Despite the temporary pause, scientists remain concerned that any funding delays could themselves negatively impact medical research.
“When research stops, there’s a lot of knock-on effects. Sometimes, labs are running experiments that take weeks or months of cycling through, and you can undo a year’s worth of progress just by having discontinuity over a week or so,” Koon said.
In a message to the Georgetown community on Feb. 11, Norman Beauchamp Jr., Executive Vice President for Health Sciences, wrote that the university has formed a working group to attempt to alleviate any negative impacts of the budget cuts.
“We are evaluating all stop work orders, and applying for waivers from agencies that provide additional consideration for grants involving lifesaving medicines and services,” Beauchamp wrote. “Simultaneously, we are exploring pathways for ameliorating the impacts of the NIH’s drastic reduction in support of research infrastructure in the short term and preemptive planning for long-term changes in order to best preserve our research enterprise.”
Koon recently moved to Georgetown from Johns Hopkins University, one of the initial members of the Massachusetts lawsuit. He expressed hope that the pushback from universities across the country would help protect medical research funding.
“A lot of the academic centers have banded together, and I think they will contest this quite heavily,” Koon said. “I’m willing to bet that the voice, the collective voice, of research universities will make this a little bit more visible.”
