National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant terminations have pulled almost $2 billion in funding away from U.S. medical schools and hospitals, including $314.5 million in funding intended to train biomedical and health researchers, according to an analysis from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
The halted funding undercuts medical schools and academic hospitals’ financial sustainability, immediately ended at least 160 active clinical trials for patients being treated for conditions like HIV/AIDS or cancer and threatens “the ability of academic medicine to attract and retain the best and brightest scientists,” the association warned in a Wednesday data brief.
An accompanying release from the AAMC framed the grant terminations alongside a slew of proposed executive and legislative actions it said threaten academic medicine and millions of patients, such as Medicaid provider tax limits and eliminating federal student aid programs.
“For generations, bipartisan leaders have recognized that America’s strength and future rely on the groundbreaking research performed at our nation’s biomedical research facilities, the complex and highly sophisticated care provided at academic health systems that is the envy of the world, and the ability of our medical schools and teaching hospitals to train the next generation of physicians," AAMC President and CEO David Skorton, M.D., said in a position piece published Wednesday. “For the sake of medical advancement, economic prosperity, and the health of every citizen, we need policymakers to work with us, not against us. The stakes could not be higher—lives truly hang in the balance.”
The AAMC’s analysis, based on data available as of June 4, outlined 2,282 total NIH grant terminations tallying nearly $3.79 billion, 1,183 of which totaling $1.97 billion were among U.S. medical schools and hospitals. Among the latter group, 727 terminated grants were for research and development ($1.65 billion) and 452 were for research training and career development ($314.5 million).
When reviewing state-level terminations across all types of institutions, Massachusetts ($168.1 million), New York ($135.1 million), California ($39.5 million), New Mexico ($17.6 million) and Texas ($14.1 million) lost the most funding for research training and career development grants—though the AAMC noted that some states in the Southeast (Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia) and Midwest (Illinois) were also among those facing the steepest cuts.
The group’s accompanying policy paper noted that the administration has proposed to cut billions from the NIH’s FY2026 budget, which also suggests the administration will keep pursuing a 15% limit on indirect costs for research grants, a change that is currently paused by the courts.
Further, a proposed elimination of federal student aid programs, such as Grad PLUS loans, and other planned changes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility requirements would affect almost half of all medical students, the AAMC has said. Such policies “would undermine the future physician workforce and ultimately make it harder for patients in communities nationwide to get the care they need,” Skorton said in the article.
Other policy callouts in the article—Medicaid cuts, an April Supreme Court ruling that limited disproportionate share hospital payments, below-cost Medicare reimbursements, drugmakers’ 340B rebate models and site-neutral payment proposals—affect a broad swath of the hospital industry. Still, the AAMC noted that its member academic health systems and, by extension, their communities, could be particularly susceptible due to their outsized provision of uncompensated care and provision of critical clinical services such as trauma centers.
“Collectively, if all of the proposed actions are approved, the impact on academic medicine will be enormous,” AAMC Chief Public Policy Officer Danielle Turnipseed said in the article. “Academic health systems can only absorb so much without significant harm to biomedical research, medical education and patient care.”