STAT+: NIH awarded all its grant funding, but delayed and opaque decisions stymied researchers — SkimNews
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- NIH spent its full ~$34 billion external grants budget in FY2026 (ended Wednesday) but awarded only ~58,000 projects, down from ~61,000 in FY2025 and well below the ~63,700 annual average before the second Trump administration
- The White House's push to fully fund more multiyear grants in advance likely contributed to fewer new awards being issued, according to STAT's analysis of the drop
- NIH continued reducing grant awards involving health disparities, race, and ethnicity, and made little progress on Trump administration priorities including distributing funds more evenly across the country and expanding support for early-career scientists
- Researchers told STAT in surveys and interviews that delays in the grant review process are slowing the pace of their work and making it difficult to propose and conduct the innovative science NIH exists to support
- The smaller grant total may increase somewhat in coming weeks due to reporting lags in the NIH grants database
Why it matters: NIH is the largest U.S. funder of biomedical research, and the drop from ~63,700 pre-Trump grants to 58,000 in FY2026 means thousands fewer labs supported. Continued cuts to health-disparities and early-career awards, paired with review delays, leave researchers with longer waits and narrower options for the innovative science NIH is meant to fund.
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