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According to internal records reviewed by Propublica, the National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding for the health impacts of climate change.
The guidance distributed to several staff members last week is behind several new directives to cut NIH funding for grants focused on subjects that contradict Trump administration’s priorities, including gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues, vaccine evacuation, diversity, equity and inclusion.
It is unclear whether climate guidance will affect aggressive grants and lead to the end of funding, but the directive appears to halt future funding opportunities for research or academic programs focusing on the health impacts of climate change.
“It’s an industry-controlled and won administration,” said Dr. Lisa Patel, executive director of the Society of Medicine on Climate and Health Consortium, a coalition of health professionals who raise awareness about the health impacts of climate change. “This is an agenda item for the fossil fuel industry, and this management is doing what the fossil fuel industry wants.”
She called the new guidance “devastating” and said it would have a “devastating” effect on much-needed research.
As extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires and floods continue to intensify and become more frequent, researchers are increasingly examining the impact of climate change on public health. The NIH provides billions of dollars per year for biomedical research across the country, and funds hundreds of grants and programs dedicated to investigating the issue.
What we see
During Donald Trump’s second presidency, Propovica will focus on areas that need scrutiny. Below are some of the issues reporters watch, and how to safely communicate with them.
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In 2021, under President Joe Biden, the agency launched Climate Change and Health Initiatives, coordinating and encouraging more research and training. The initiative received a congressional budget of $40 million for research in both 2023 and 2024. However, last month, two other similar NIH programs dedicated to initiative and climate change and health were demolished.
The latest directive will cut all future climate change and health funds across the agency, regardless of its relationship with previously cancelled initiatives.
In response to ProPublica’s question regarding the directive, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Human Services said “we are taking action to terminate research funding that is not in line with NIH and HHS priorities.”
“At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring the institutions to a tradition that maintains gold standards, evidence-based science,” the spokesman said. “When we start to make America healthy again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects American health. As part of our mission to make America healthy again, we don’t turn the stones over when identifying the root cause of the chronic disease outbreak.”
Climate and health researchers faced hostility during President Donald Trump’s first administration, but were able to continue their work, according to Linda Billumbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, who served as a federal scientist for 40 years.
“Under Trump, we scratched the word “change” from work and talked about “climate” and “health.” That was accepted,” she said. “If the NIH does not study the health effects of climate, we cannot prevent some of those health effects and can’t find a way to deal with them.”
In a December report, the NIH listed many ongoing climate change and health projects in funding, including research to investigate the health effects of Maui wildfires in Hawaii, developing models to predict dengue virus transmission by mosquitos, and studying the effects of heat on fertility and reproductive function. Since then, the Trump administration has taken the report offline.
Veena Singla, assistant professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said:
The new NIH directive follows the Trump administration’s broader agenda for efforts to document and address climate change. Trump has suspended billions of dollars on climate-related causes. He also issued an executive order aimed at increasing fossil fuel production and reducing government efforts to address climate change.
According to the New York Times, his administration is considering plans to remove the Environmental Protection Agency’s science lab. Some scientists in that office are studying the health effects of climate change, examining questions such as how rising temperatures change the body’s response to air pollution and how climate change affects the amount of toxic chemicals in the atmosphere and water.
The NIH and the White House did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. The EPA did not answer questions about whether climate change and health research will continue at institutions. In an emailed response to a question from Propublica, the EPA press conference wrote, “Trump EPA is dedicated to being led by the agency’s commitment to the agency’s central mission to protect human health and the environment, unlike Biden EPA appointees who have the major ethical issues found in radical stakeholder groups.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s Doubles Peak
Trump’s perspective on climate change appears to be at odds with the perspective of his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spent decades as an environmental lawyer. “I believe that the climate crisis is a reality and that humans are causing it, that it is existential,” he said in an interview last year. HHS did not answer Propublica’s questions about the secretary’s views.
However, Patel told Propublica he does not expect the new health secretary who oversees the NIH to support the administration’s agenda and conflicting views.
“What we can see right away from allowing RFK Jr. to happen and not wanting to weigh him down is not going to be an anti-industrial voice,” she said. “He’s not there to follow the best science.”
