Former NIH staff on how political interference hobbled America's premiere environmental health institute

"I wrote this commentary as a tribute to my NIEHS colleagues, to the Institute that shaped my career, and to the dedicated environmental health researchers across the country..." - Kim McAllister

This project was led by Kim McAllister, former NIH Program Officer in the Genes and Environment Health Branch at NIEHS. She wrote with the support of off-duty and former staff throughout NIEHS and NIH. All work was conducted in personal capacity.

From the author

Leaving the National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS) was one of the most difficult decisions of my career. The events of early 2025 weighed heavily on me, and after considerable reflection, I concluded that I could no longer continue working there in a way that was consistent with my own professional values. I had served for many years, first as a researcher and later, an NIH Program Officer. I had the privilege of working with extremely talented scientists from around the world on programs and initiatives that advanced environmental health science.

I wrote this commentary as a tribute to my NIEHS colleagues, to the Institute that shaped my career, and to the dedicated environmental health researchers across the country who continue to advance environmental health science under extraordinarily challenging circumstances. It is also my attempt to give voice to the profound consequences these changes are having on NIEHS and the field of environmental health research-consequences that many current NIEHS employees, because of their positions, may not be able to describe publicly.

^{Photograph of main NIEHS building, with the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Facility (white section) and F-Module in the foreground.}

Summary

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has, for more than 55 years, served as the National Institutes of Health’s primary institute for understanding how environmental exposures influence human biology and disease. Research supported by NIEHS has transformed scientific understanding of metal toxicity, air pollution, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, occupational hazards, and many other environmental risks, leading to major public health policies that have improved the well-being of millions of people in the United States and worldwide.

Although each presidential administration establishes its own scientific priorities, the changes described here represent more than the routine shift in priorities that accompanies a change in administration; they signal a fundamental restructuring of how environmental health science is funded, managed, and trusted in the United States. This article explores the increasing political oversight of grant funding, restrictions on certain areas of scientific inquiry, disruptions to peer review and program management, limitations on international collaborations, and reduced support for research involving vulnerable communities. These alterations are documented through examples involving climate-health research, environmental justice, international collaborations, NIH peer review, scientific leadership, communication, and workforce effects.

We expect the long-term consequences will extend well beyond NIEHS. Environmental health research depends on sustained investments, stable scientific partnerships, and public confidence in an independent, evidence-based research enterprise. Continued funding uncertainty and increasing political influence over scientific decision-making risk weakening the biomedical research workforce, discouraging long-term investigations, reducing international scientific collaboration, and eroding public trust in NIH-supported science. If these trends continue, the nation’s capacity to identify emerging environmental threats and translate scientific discoveries into effective public health protections are likely to be substantially diminished.

Introduction

The mission of NIEHS is to research how the environment affects biological systems across the lifespan and to translate this knowledge to reduce disease and ultimately improve the health of people and communities. Health risks from different environmental exposures are studied using a variety of scientific disciplines including: environmental toxicology, exposure science and exposomics, gene–environment interactions, environmental epidemiology, and community-engaged environmental health research. Research supported by NIEHS has led to broad shifts in scientific consensus that ultimately resulted in major public health policy changes with widespread improvements on human health in this country. Some important examples include:

1) Research illustrating that over 50% of children under six in the U.S. show detectable amounts of lead in their blood and that there is no safe level of lead exposure (even low levels of lead impair cognitive development in children), which contributed to the phase-out of leaded gasoline in the U.S. and led to regulations on lead-based paint.

2) Studies demonstrating that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, not solely respiratory disease, which fundamentally changed scientific understanding of air pollution. These findings informed increasingly stringent U.S. EPA ambient air quality standards and contributed to global estimates identifying ambient air pollution as one of the leading environmental causes of premature mortality worldwide. Air pollution accounted for 8.1 million deaths globally in 2021, becoming the second leading risk factor for death, including for children under five years of age.

3) Evidence linking chronic exposure to toxic metals, such as arsenic, lead, and mercury, to increased risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease and many other chronic health outcomes, which has informed drinking water standards, environmental remediation efforts, and public health policies worldwide.

4) Understanding the impact of early-life environmental exposures (including endocrine-disrupting chemicals and “forever chemicals” such as PFAS) in shaping lifelong disease risks, with links found between prenatal exposures and many chronic diseases (obesity, diabetes, etc.). This understanding informed consumer action resulting in removal of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) from baby bottles and children’s toys.

5) Research identifying environmental and occupational carcinogens, including industrial chemicals, air pollutants, and radiation, and translating this evidence into the National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens, which has informed regulatory policies and cancer prevention efforts in the United States and internationally.

NIEHS serves a critical role at NIH, providing the link between the environment and human health. Recent changes under the current administration reduce, diminish, and even threaten to eliminate this important area of research. These actions will negatively impact the environmental health of the people in this country and around the world for generations to come. Some of these destructive changes are NIH or government-wide and others specifically target NIEHS.

Cuts to climate-health research as the world heats up

NIEHS has historically been a leading federal agency for investigating and funding the impact of climate-related exposures on health. We helped clarify climate change as a major public health issue, not just an environmental one. Climate-health research is a direct extension of NIEHS’s traditional strengths in exploring questions around how changes to the environment, including extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and other climate-related exposures, affect health. Climate change continues to be a defining circumstance of our times. In 2026 so far, hundreds of high temperature records have been broken across the United States, and more are expected before the summer is over. Such extreme heat is a potential health risk for practically everyone, but especially the elderly, children, the unhoused, outdoor workers, and certain military members. Unfortunately, it was announced in February 2025 that the Climate Change and Health Initiative, the Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center, and the Climate and Health Scholars Program will no longer be funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in accordance with President Trump’s executive order ‘Unleashing American Energy’. These programs were intended to coordinate climate-health research across NIH-funded investigators and support collaboration among research centers, as well as train early-career scientists in climate and health research. NIH also issued internal guidance directing staff to discontinue funding new research on the health effects of climate change, effectively ending the agency’s coordinated climate-health research enterprise. With the new administration, the boundaries around what counts as an acceptable “climate-health” project has shifted to health consequences of extreme heat, floods, wildfires, and other weather-related exposures only; no funding is allowed for studies related to fossil fuels or alternative energy sources, such as solar power.

^{Screenshot from the website of the now defunct Climate Change and Health Initiative}

In this vein, NIEHS has now launched a new program on Health and Extreme Weather (HEW) to address knowledge gaps and generate evidence that can improve prevention, preparedness, resilience, and response to extreme weather events. Hopefully this program can accomplish some of the same goals as the terminated previous programs. However, the change in emphasis can significantly shape what kinds of grants get funded in this area of science and my colleagues and I worry that important environmental and biological information will now be missed. Researchers have already started to avoid this field altogether, rather than navigating the uncertainty of whether their work aligns with shifting or politicized interpretations of what is considered acceptable within this important area of scientific research.

Research overseas provided unique opportunities that may no longer exist

Some of the most influential studies linking various environmental pollutants, toxicants, and heavy metals to specific disease outcomes or health disorders have been conducted outside the United States. A wide range of an exposure in a large population is needed to establish an association for a human disease or disorder so diverse research environments are pivotal, especially when the relevant exposure is more rarely encountered in the U.S.. The knowledge gained has always been directly applicable to understanding diseases that cross our own borders, and this work consistently informs disease prevention and intervention in the U.S.. For example, Human Heredity and Health in Africa, or H3Africa, is an initiative studying genetically diverse African populations to identify disease-associated genetic variants. The project improves our understanding of diseases affecting both Africans and African Americans, discoveries that would likely have been missed if research had remained focused primarily on European ancestry populations alone. In another example, the Bangladesh groundwater arsenic crisis created an unparalleled opportunity to study chronic arsenic exposure in large populations. So NIEHS scientists decided to support work in Bangladesh which helped us link arsenic exposure to cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and preterm birth. The Bangladesh arsenic work is especially compelling because it exemplifies a classic NIEHS principle: studying an environmental exposure overseas where it is most extreme helped to generate knowledge that directly informed the protection of Americans exposed to arsenic through private wells, contaminated groundwater, and hazardous waste sites. Such work continues to be important as arsenic remains a problematic exposure across much of the United States.

Changes from the current administration will now make these types of international collaborative studies much more daunting. Rather than supporting foreign collaborators through a traditional subaward under a U.S. grant, each participating foreign institution must now submit and manage its own linked NIH application through a newly established PF5 collaborative international research project application structure. This adds significant administrative complexity for international collaborations in terms of coordination, application preparation, budget development, and award management. We understand this is already discouraging U.S. investigators and foreign researchers from pursuing international collaborations. In addition, NIH grantees are not allowed to publish with foreign researchers if they are not explicitly included in their NIH grant. Most NIH foreign awards are receiving intense inspection currently. Furthermore, the OMB’s proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule would prevent foreign entities from receiving Research and Development (R&D) awards except with written approval from a senior political appointee; all international elements in federal grants would face intense examination and justification. From a NIEHS perspective, the irony is that some of its strongest environmental health findings came from exactly the kinds of projects now facing this heavier scrutiny. We expect the long-term effect will be a reduction in international collaborations as U.S. researchers avoid the hassles and delays involved with foreign components and international collaborators. Barriers for low- and middle-income country collaborators will likely be particularly hard to overcome, thus expanding the inequities between the countries and communities that benefit from NIEHS-supported environmental research.

“The irony is that some of [NIEHS’s] strongest environmental health findings came from exactly the kinds of projects now facing this heavier scrutiny.”

Environmental justice and the DEI Executive Order

NIEHS has a long history of establishing environmental justice programs that address the underlying health concerns of communities across the country. NIEHS-funded research has documented how low-income communities often face higher exposure to a wide variety of pollutants that then translate into measurable health disparities; this has influenced both research and policy priorities. These projects consider health equity holistically and include a wide range of communities across the country to improve the health of all people in the United States. President Trump’s DEI executive order and NIH’s own internal policies made terms such as “health equity”, “environmental justice”, and “diversity” banned or “flagged” words in all NIH grants, which specifically impacted a variety of NIEHS-funded studies exploring the effect of environmental exposures in vulnerable communities around the country.

Partnerships are key for studies that impact vulnerable communities and establishing authentic and sustainable community empowering partnerships and infrastructure takes time. Many NIEHS efforts that supported research studies with long-standing partnerships in communities disproportionately affected by environmental exposures were disrupted by the DEI executive order; ongoing projects were paused and significantly delayed as they were placed under intense inquiry. The local communities and their advocates are the ones that are most affected when these NIEHS grants are abruptly terminated, delayed, and/or reduced in budget and scope.

One such effort that was interrupted was a coordinated NIH initiative supporting eight research projects to develop evidence-based approaches for reporting environmental exposure and genomic research results back to study participants and communities. The initiative placed particular emphasis on communities disproportionately burdened by environmental contamination, where communicating individual and community-level exposure information raises complex ethical, legal, and public health challenges. A number of these grants were terminated starting early in February 2025 and into the spring of 2025, due to the DEI directive. The RFA¹ (Request for Applications) that these grants were funded through requested that investigators frame their grants focusing on several themes, one of which was health equity. As such, there was a direct conflict between the requirements laid out in the initiative’s request and the new administration’s priorities. These specific NIEHS grants were all eventually re-instated (albeit with reduced budgets) through a painful and unnecessarily drawn-out process of negotiations and re-writing of grants. Indeed, throughout NIH, program officers, researchers, and grants management officials have spent countless hours negotiating terms in grant applications or existing awards to make them compliant with the political agenda of the current administration.

As confirmation of the damaging effects of the DEI executive order on this type of research, independent analyses of NIH grant records found a measurable decline in the use of diversity-related terminology in grant abstracts during 2025. The researchers of these analyses concluded that investigators appeared to be modifying language to avoid attracting the additional scrutiny associated with terms that might be flagged under President Trump’s DEI executive order. Recent federal court decisions have raised serious concerns about how anti-DEI directives from this administration were implemented, finding that some agencies relied on unconstitutional screening methods and arbitrarily terminated grants in violation of federal law. For example, a federal judge recently ruled that staff in Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unconstitutionally used ChatGPT and keyword searches for terms such as "DEI," "DEIA," "equity," and "inclusion" to identify and terminate federally funded humanities grants. In addition, in June 2025, U.S. District Judge William G. Young ruled that NIH's termination of numerous research grants was "arbitrary and capricious" and found that the cancellations reflected unlawful discrimination against projects involving racial minorities and LGBTQ populations. NIH Director Dr. Bhattacharya claimed that no such banned words exist related to the administration’s DEI executive order. Yet the White House recently admitted to using keywords to review grants, and Congress released a list of these words in a report. Grants from NIEHS and other NIH institutes are continually being given additional scrutiny and delayed, revised, and in some cases, rejected if they contain terms such as “health equity”, "structural racism”, “health disparities”, etc. This could have a chilling effect on research in these areas for many years to come as investigators avoid long-term projects that could be problematic to get funded; collaborations and partnerships with communities exploring environmental justice issues across the country will be more limited and communities will continue to lose hope and trust.

^{1 Link broken to RFA-OD-24-004. Developing Innovative Approaches for Informing Participants of the Results of Environmental Health and Genomic Research (RM1 Clinical Trial Optional). National Institutes of Health, Office of Science Policy, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Human Genome Research Institute, and All of Us Research Program. Released 2023.}

Decisions made unilaterally by political appointees sideline scientific experitise

The national science agenda being shaped from this administration includes a very dangerous precedent in which political appointees occupy high-level NIH science positions that should be filled only by the most qualified scientists. This precedent is currently being reinforced and codified with the OMB’s proposed rule, which explicitly states that senior political appointees, rather than career scientists or program officers with subject matter expertise, would now be required to conduct a “pre-issuance review” of every discretionary grant before it is awarded. In practice, this gives political appointees a veto over any science that conflicts with the current administration’s ideology. In addition, the critical role played by program officers with scientific training and expertise in identifying the most promising new science initiatives and directions, based on direct communication with U.S. scientists, has been largely eliminated from NIH. Almost all new science efforts and initiatives are now top-down with decisions often made unilaterally by political appointees with limited scientific knowledge and no historical or long-term understanding of prior efforts in the relevant science field. The OMB proposed rule would codify this, since every new federal science grant program would need to align with the current administration’s policies and priorities. All grant solicitations going forward under OMB’s rule would essentially need to be structured around the current administration’s political agenda rather than around the scientific needs of communities around the country.

NIEHS was particularly impacted by this pattern when Dr. Kyle Walsh replaced the previous NIEHS director in the fall of 2025. Walsh has longstanding personal and professional ties to Vice President JD Vance, whom he has described as one of his closest friends. Vance officiated Walsh’s wedding and lived with Walsh and his wife for several months in 2015 while completing Hillbilly Elegy. Walsh later served as a science policy adviser to Vance during his time in the U.S. Senate. Both men are from Ohio, attended Ohio State University, and later studied at Yale University. Walsh was not selected through the customary process used to fill a vacant NIH high-level position, which involves an expansive national search by an expert committee and extensive interviews with multiple candidates; instead, he appears to have been appointed Director of NIEHS because of his connection to the vice president. Due to his limited expertise in environmental health and toxicology, along with a relatively modest record of grant support and relevant publications, it is likely Walsh would not have passed the initial screening stage of the search process. For comparison, a previous NIEHS Director, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, had nearly 30 years of federal research and leadership experience in environmental health and toxicology, including 19 years at EPA directing major environmental health research programs and hundreds of significant environmentally-relevant publications to her name. Dr. Walsh appears to be performing his responsibilities professionally and shows commitment to the Institute’s mission. However, in addition to concerns with the director’s qualifications, a harmful precedent has been established for this type of appointment. Replacing long-serving program leadership with individuals who lack institutional memory of the grants portfolio, the scientific rationale underlying earlier funding decisions, and long-standing relationships with the research community risks weakening the continuity and stewardship that are central to effective NIEHS program management.

Another example of a presumed political appointee at NIEHS is Justin Mabie, who has been quietly added to the Office of Director at NIEHS without any official announcement or acknowledgment to staff and no clear official role identified. Mabie is the author of the book Climate Change Deception: The Alarming Corruption of Climate Science, which argues that climate-change data and policy have been distorted by government and academic institutions. Mabie is also currently pursuing litigation alleging that historical weather and climate datasets were manipulated or destroyed by government and academic entities. Those allegations remain contested and unproven in court. Given NIEHS’s longstanding leadership role in climate-related health research, the placement of an individual who has publicly challenged core elements of evidence-based climate science raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest and about whether research related to any facet of climate science will receive objective evaluation and support under this administration.

Consolidation of NIH review into the Center for Scientific Review (CSR)

*for more see our deep dive on peer review changes

The 2025 consolidation transferred responsibility for all NIH initial peer review activities from the individual institutes and centers (including NIEHS) to the CSR. Therefore NIEHS, like other NIH institutes, lost in-house specialized review for all their programs. Centralizing peer review has effectively sidelined Institute Review Officers — the individuals most familiar with the science and best equipped to recruit the right expertise. Without their involvement, the ability to construct customized, deeply informed review panels is diminished, raising concerns about the accuracy and depth of scientific evaluation, especially for large, complex, and highly-specialized programs. The programs especially hit hard by this loss of expertise at NIEHS include several large key center programs, such as the Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers, the Children’s Environmental Health and Translation Centers, and Superfund programs. These larger center grants have many components, often with strong translational elements that interact with other basic research pieces. As such, the review of these programs requires a diversity of scientific expertise to evaluate the different factors appropriately, and this will be challenging for CSR to accomplish. Sadly, for the somewhat “niche” environmental health science community, the impact of the CSR consolidation, along with the reduction in specific special emphasis panels (SEPs) and initiatives with SEPs, will make it even harder than it already was for environmental health applications to be given a fair review; environmental health grants will be placed in larger, broader review panels without review experts that understand the complexities of environmental health and toxicology studies.

Branch evaluating proper use of tax-dollars on NIEHS’s most expansive programs is no more

The program analysis branch at NIEHS was dismissed abruptly in early spring 2025 with no transition time or plan for replacing the essential functions of this branch. There has been no successful attempt to bring back this branch. As the name implies, this branch analyzed and evaluated science programs supported by NIEHS, particularly the most expensive and expansive ones. Eliminating it runs directly counter to this administration’s stated goal of ensuring that only the highest quality science is funded. Without the team responsible for evaluations, there are no longer data-driven analyses to determine whether taxpayer dollars are being used efficiently and effectively. A tracking system developed over 15 years by this branch was also disbanded; it tracked the long-term impacts of grant progress and career progress for trainees funded through NIEHS. This team also developed a high-impacts tracking systems (HITS) to identify the most promising inventions, publications, and translational impacts, which often served as the basis for annual congressional justifications. Whether intentional or not, discontinuing HITS has made it extraordinarily difficult to identify and report the biggest success stories arising from NIEHS funded research.

Communication disruptions

Communication is a core part of what NIEHS does and is especially critical for alerting the public to findings related to harmful toxicants and pollutants in the environment. The Environmental Factor, NIEHS’s flagship monthly newsletter, reached nearly 16,000 subscribers and served as an important vehicle for communicating Institute research, scientific achievements, training opportunities, and public health information. Its discontinuation under this administration represents the loss of a major outreach tool connecting NIEHS science with the broader research community and the public. Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), the premier in-house NIEHS journal that published many seminal papers related to environmental health, was also shut down. It stopped accepting new submissions and ceased regular publishing for approximately a year before it was publicly sold and relaunched under the American Chemical Society, with no former NIEHS staff (except the Editor-in-Chief) retained.

^{Screenshot of the header from the final issue of the Environmental Factor}

The NIH scientific contacts on NIEHS (and all NIH) websites as well as on Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) has also been dramatically reduced, which makes it difficult for researchers to reach the right person at NIH to answer questions when planning a grant submission. Multiple resources that NIEHS spent millions of dollars developing on Climate Change and Health have also been removed from the website including the Climate Change and Human Health Literature Portal that included access to 10K+ global research articles, and a Climate Change and Human Health Glossary, the goal of which was to help standardize the use of research and terminology in studies in this area to improve collaboration and understanding. The restrictions on travel are such that White House-appointed staff determine the ability of program staff to travel to scientific conferences. This makes it more difficult for NIH staff to attend conferences, due to longer approval processes and delays in approval, causing them to miss the formal and informal discussions that are extremely important in the identification of fertile scientific opportunities. As a specific recent example, most NIEHS staff were only informed of their approval to attend the most recent 2026 annual Society of Toxicology meeting a week ahead of time, which disrupted key events NIEHS was planning at this crucial meeting for the toxicology community that NIEHS serves. Lastly, many of the contracts at NIEHS (and other NIH institutes) that provide vital support for planning and running any scientific meetings, workshops, or conferences have been severely limited or cancelled. All of these issues severely impact the communication of key research discoveries and/or innovative programs and progress made by NIEHS grantees and staff.

Undermining of trust and depletion of morale

Perhaps the biggest long-term impact on environmental health and changes at NIEHS brought on by this administration is related to the undermining of trust that may be hard to regain from both the public and researchers alike. One example of that is in the autism field, in which NIEHS has long been a leading NIH institute for exploring possible environmental risk factors. About 1 in 31 (3.2%) children by age eight have been identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder, up from 1 in 150 in 2000. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has undermined current long-term research efforts related to autism in a number of critical ways.

Initially, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hired David Geier in 2025 as a data analyst who was reported to be involved in reviewing vaccine safety data and studying the long-debated vaccine–autism question. His appointment drew substantial criticism from many public health experts because of his prior history of being an uninformed American vaccine activist who argued that vaccine ingredients were associated with autism. Geier’s work was widely criticized and decisively discredited by evidence-based medical and scientific organizations, and several of his studies had to be retracted because they were shown to be faulty and misleading. A number of large, well-designed studies have not found any evidence that routine childhood vaccines could cause autism. Therefore, the broader scientific consensus, including major national and international public health organizations such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), World Health Organization, and American Academy of Pediatrics, had consistently concluded that vaccines do not cause autism. Thus, his appointment and role were strongly criticized for concerns about qualifications, impartiality, and conflict of interest.

Then, in April 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that a large federal research effort would identify the cause of the “autism epidemic” by September 2025. The announcement was widely criticized by autism researchers and public health experts because autism is understood to result from a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors rather than a single identifiable cause. Experts also noted that no meaningful new research program addressing such a complex question could reasonably be launched, completed, analyzed, and subjected to scientific review within a period of only a few months.

Finally, in September 2025, the administration held a press conference announcing what it described as “progress” in identifying the causes of autism. A central focus was a possible association between prenatal acetaminophen (Tylenol) exposure and autism. However, the evidence presented was based primarily on observational studies that reported statistical associations rather than demonstrating causation. The principal source cited, a 2021 Nature Reviews Endocrinology consensus statement, called for additional research and a precautionary approach while explicitly acknowledging important limitations in the evidence. Those caveats received little attention during the press conference. Subsequent evaluations by researchers and professional organizations have likewise concluded that the available evidence is insufficient to establish a causal relationship, and clinical recommendations regarding acetaminophen use during pregnancy have not changed.

For the autism advocacy community and families directly impacted by autism who have long sought clear, evidence-based answers, this type of communication risks creating confusion rather than clarity. More broadly, it illustrates the potential long-term consequences for depleting public trust in NIH-supported science when preliminary or nuanced findings are presented without appropriate context. Oversimplified or overstated public health messaging can erode confidence, particularly when subsequent clarification reveals that the underlying science is more uncertain than initially conveyed. A new autism effort, the Autism Data Science Initiative, was launched at NIH in the fall of 2025, which shows promise for identifying possible contributors to the causes of autism. Sadly, some well-established researchers in this field failed to apply to this initiative due to the distrust of this administration and the current chaotic status of NIH funding and oversight; in fact, some NIH staff were also reluctant to be associated publicly with the Autism Data Science Initiative when it was first released because of the association with Kennedy and President Trump and their debunked and misinformed opinions about causes of autism.

The possible cancelling of grants midstream was almost unheard of before this administration and was generally only done for gross underperformance, noncompliance, or financial mis-appropriation of funds (fraud). This administration has chosen to cancel a wide range of grants midstream for simply not conforming with their current political ideology. The OMB’s proposed rule would codify and expand the authority to terminate active grants at basically any time, for any reason, citing simply that they are “inconsistent with current agency priorities.” This retroactively threatens ongoing multi-year research that researchers and community partners have invested in and planned for. Most NIH grants last for five years because findings (especially human epidemiological studies and animal model research) require extensive time before experiments are complete and data can be analyzed and published. Cancelling grants mid-stream will often result in little or no return to American taxpayers. Researchers hire staff, make commitments to participants and communities, and design multi-year projects around the assumption that a funded grant will run its course. Hence, researcher and community trust in NIEHS and NIH as a whole is extremely tested at this time and will likely continue to be so in the foreseeable future. In addition, this practice promotes greater exacerbation of disparities between universities and the researchers that reside there; researchers at larger universities will have more resources at their disposal to handle unexpected budget cuts or grant terminations compared to researchers at smaller institutions.

^{Image taken by former NIEHS funded trainee Jessica Plavicki at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Image was chosen as a winner of the 2016 NIH funded research image call. Confocal micrograph where optical sections through an embryonic zebrafish brain are projected into a single plane and the brain vasculature is color-coded for depth.}

Perhaps the most damaging consequence of the current NIH funding uncertainty will be its impact on the next generation of scientists. Many universities have reduced graduate admissions and limited the recruitment of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other trainees. Analyses of 2025 NIH grant terminations indicate that graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career investigators have been disproportionately affected, threatening to erode the research pipeline. Faced with increasing uncertainty about obtaining and sustaining NIH funding, many talented students may simply choose other professions, creating a research workforce shortage for years to come.

Transferring NIEHS to an entirely different agency would threaten research programs

The Administration’s FY 2027 budget proposal (released around April 2026) would remove the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) from NIH and transfer it to a newly created National Center for Chemicals and Toxins within CDC, representing the most significant structural change to the Institute since its creation. It is framed as a way to improve coordination on chemicals, toxins, and environmental health under “Make America Healthy Again” priorities, by combining programs across HHS-including parts of CDC, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research. However, this kind of restructuring, if not carefully designed, is likely to create a turbulent period for environmental health sciences. Each of these centers and programs has distinct missions, roles, and expertise that could be disrupted by a rapid or poorly integrated consolidation. For NIEHS, all efforts follow NIH-centered policies, and the extramural division of NIEHS especially relies heavily on the guidelines established by NIH grant policy, while the other agencies are not aligned with NIH policies and procedures. In addition, there are countless ongoing cross-NIH initiatives and efforts that NIEHS plays a key role in. Specifically, NIEHS provides the institutional expertise in how environmental exposures influence biology across many NIH Common Fund initiatives. That expertise underlies emerging programs such as Complement-ARIE, which aims to use New Approach Methodologies like computational techniques and organoids to complement traditional research models. Other transformative programs are RNomics, which aims to build tools to help researchers study the entire set of RNA molecules in the human body and the Epigenomics Roadmap, which systematically characterized epigenomic landscapes in primary human tissues and cells. Because environmental exposures affect virtually every organ system and disease area, NIEHS provides cross-cutting scientific capabilities that are difficult to replicate elsewhere within NIH. It is not clear how extramural grants would be distributed at NIEHS and if any of the cross-NIH efforts, such as the NIH Common Fund initiatives, would continue to have NIEHS involvement, and in what capacity, if NIEHS is no longer officially part of NIH. This has caused a lot of anxiety among NIEHS staff, grantees, and the broader environmental scientific community as well.

^{RNA Polymerase II. Credit: David Bushnell, Ken Westover and Roger Kornberg, Stanford University}

In addition to proposed reductions across NIH and the uncertainty surrounding the future of NIEHS itself, the Administration’s FY 2027 budget includes particularly deep cuts to several long-standing trademark NIEHS programs. The FY 2027 President’s Budget proposes reducing funding for NIEHS Superfund-related activities by approximately one-third, including substantial reductions to the Worker Training Program; this program has trained hazardous waste workers, emergency responders, and disaster recovery staff for decades. Beyond its role in hazardous waste site cleanup, the Worker Training Program has also become a cornerstone of the nation’s environmental emergency preparedness infrastructure, providing health and safety training during responses to numerous natural disasters, terrorist incidents, hazardous materials disasters, and pandemics, including the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Conclusion

The long-term consequences of the politicization of U.S. science at NIEHS (and NIH in general) are likely to include a diminished research pipeline, weakened international collaborations, reduced focus on environmental factors affecting vulnerable communities, and a detrimental effect on scientists wishing to pursue any scientific question needing sustained long-term investment that can be in danger of being overturned every time the administration changes. Perhaps most alarming, the erosion of scientific peer review, scientific independence, and government trust risks undermining the very foundation that has allowed NIH, and NIEHS in particular, to generate significant environmental research discoveries that protect American public health. While the full impact will likely take decades to be fully discerned, the current changes forced by this administration upon NIEHS suggests a stressed and compromised environmental health research institution with reduced capacity to take on the emerging exposures and global environmental challenges that demand exactly the opposite.

^{From the Duke Chronicle - photo of Durham, North Carolina’s June 2025 No Kings event}

The future of NIEHS, NIH as a whole, and other federal science agencies will be determined by scientists and policymakers, but also by the public they serve. Public investment in NIH had a long history of bipartisan support because its benefits extend to all Americans. Perhaps scientists and those that support this view have been too complacent, and this administration’s actions serve as a stark wake-up call. Those who value biomedical and environmental research can make their voices heard by learning about proposed policy changes and engaging with scientific and patient advocacy organizations (including 27 UNIHTED, United for Cures, Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientist Network for Advancing Policy (SNAP), etc.). They can also communicate with their elected representatives, participate in public comment opportunities when available, and vote in local, state, and federal elections. Ultimately, preserving sustained federal investment in science will require an informed and engaged citizenry willing to advocate for evidence-based research and the institutions that make it possible.

From the 27 UNIHTED editorial team

We would like to send a huge thank you to Kim, and the many off-duty and former staff across the NIH community who supported this piece. To scientists who are concerned about the changes outlined in this commentary, we urge you to check out our Advocacy Menu. Sometimes, we find the situation we are in daunting. But we gain a little bit of hope with every action we take, whether it be supporting our colleagues with kindness or pastries during these tough times, writing an email to a congress member, or organizing with fellow scientists: what you are doing is making a positive impact in the world.

For questions, you can find Kim on LinkedIn or email info@27unihted.org