Funding cut for landmark study of women's health [View all]
Source: NPR
Updated April 23, 2025 6:00 PM ET
The Trump administration is shutting down most of a landmark federal project studying women's health, stunning researchers around the country.
"It's a huge loss. I can't put into words what a huge loss it is," says Marian Neuhouser, who chairs the steering committee for the federally funded Women's Health Initiative. The study, begun in the 1990s, has produced a series of groundbreaking results and was continuing to gather valuable data about women's health.
The Department of Health and Human Services is terminating contracts with all four regional centers that have been following tens of thousands of women who have been participating in the project for decades, according to the project's coordinating center.
Neither the National Institutes of Health, which funds the study, nor HHS, which oversees the NIH, responded to NPR's questions about the matter. But Neuhouser says HHS notified the project's four regional centers in California, New York, Ohio and North Carolina that their contracts for collecting data will be terminated in September.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/23/nx-s1-5372892/womens-health-initiative-research-funding-gets-cut