A new study finds that in 2025, the numbers of Black and Hispanic researchers receiving U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and fellowships dropped markedly compared with previous fiscal years. From 2024 to ’25, Black and Hispanic principal investigators declined by 9.8% and 7.3%, respectively. For fellowship recipients, the fall was even steeper: The number of Black fellows fell by 40.5%, for example, from 205 to just 122.

The findings, published in JAMA on June 8, 2026, put numbers on the Trump administration’s cuts to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that had helped increase the ranks of researchers from historically marginalized communities. Lead study author Mytien Nguyen, an immunobiology M.D.-Ph.D. candidate at the Yale University School of Medicine, wanted to understand how Trump actions such as canceled grants and funding competitions affected the demographics of recent grant recipients. So Nguyen and her colleagues analyzed summary statistics from the NIH Data Book to track the self-reported identities of grant and fellowship recipients from fiscal years 2016 to ’25.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/study-finds-sharp-decline-black-hispanic-researchers-receiving-nih-funding

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