The cuts the Department of Health and Human Services began making this week to billions of dollars of grants to roughly 400 institutions go far beyond pulling back leftover funds for pandemic-era testing and vaccine efforts.
An HHS official told NOTUS that the funds had “largely” been used for COVID-19 testing and vaccination and initiatives to address COVID-related health disparities among high-risk, underserved and racial minority populations, as well as global COVID-relief projects.
But a NOTUS review of the specific programs found the cuts were much more sweeping than the agency described — cutting funding from future pandemic preparedness programs, cancer research centers, mental health and substance abuse services and more.
The broad terminations of over 1,200 grants, over a thousand of which were worth more than $1 million, are set to impact all 50 states, several U.S. territories and around 100 universities.
The grants were listed among the Department of Government Efficiency’s “savings” the same day the cuts were announced and now account for over 25% of the spending cuts DOGE has listed as line-item cancellations.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” an HHS official said in a statement to NOTUS. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
But several of the grants cut were going toward long-term disease prevention. The University of California, Irvine, was working toward a universal COVID vaccine that works across new variants of the disease as part of the Biden administration’s bid to hasten the development of new vaccines. Last year, the university announced it had made significant progress toward its goal and would move toward human clinical trials.
That program, along with other similar efforts, is now set to have its unspent funds pulled and added to DOGE’s “savings” pile.
Funding for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s work to model and track the spread of infectious diseases and improve future pandemic prevention and response was also listed as terminated.
Another research program at Duke University sought to develop new vaccines to prepare “in the event a novel animal coronavirus spills over into humans resulting in a new severe coronavirus outbreak.” DOGE said most of the $10.4 million in funds were to be terminated.
Similar vaccine-related research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison sought to prepare in case “another zoonotic coronavirus with pandemic potential could cross into the human population.” DOGE listed the $4.6 million contract as terminated.
Emory University research into COVID risk and ways to strengthen protective immunity for people with autoimmunity and cancer and University of San Francisco research into the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines were both listed among the programs axed by HHS.
Those colleges represent just some of the roughly 100 universities set to lose out on a collective $416 million in funds. The University of California, Los Angeles, and Stanford University are set to lose $109 million and $30 million, respectively, per terminations listed by DOGE.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle is set to lose out on $32 million in grant money; The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is set to lose $22 million.
HHS is also set to strip tens of millions in grants for substance abuse prevention and treatment awarded to every state in 2021. The dollar amounts granted to states and their corresponding departments and agencies are listed on the DOGE page; several states had several million dollars unspent from the grants.
DOGE also listed dozens of terminated grants for 23 mental health centers across the country — the cuts funding totaling over $227 million.
(DOGE’s website, which has repeatedly included errors, incorrectly lists several of the mental health facilities, labeling one grant as being for “TEXAS PANHANDLE MENTAL HEALTH MENTAL RETARDATION,” a name the Texas Panhandle Centers has not gone by in nearly 15 years.)
The cuts would effectively rescind much of the remaining funding allocated from the American Rescue Plan and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which received near-unanimous support from lawmakers when it passed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to “save” around $11.4 billion starting a month after the grant terminations began, as NBC News first reported. DOGE lists new HHS grant terminations dated Sunday as saving over $14 billion.
HHS expects to begin recouping the funds 30 days after termination letters are sent out, an official said, a process that began on Monday. An HHS official previously told NOTUS the agency does not comment on details regarding internal deliberations on what grants are cut.
The cuts are deep. Texas is listed as losing well over $1 billion allocated to the state’s health department and its human services commission. The health departments of California, Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania each saw roughly half a billion terminated each, per DOGE’s list. Chicago and New York City are each set to lose out on over $100 million in remaining direct funding.
It’s unclear where the now-rescinded funding would go, but it would be difficult to move them from HHS’s coffers without an act of Congress. It’s unlikely that the executive branch can unilaterally rescind funding appropriated by Congress — although congressional Republicans have voiced few objections to the administration’s efforts, and most are staunch proponents of DOGE’s work.
The newly listed grant terminations also include fresh cuts to HIV research, with programs at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Oregon Health and Science University now listed among DOGE’s “savings.”
The cuts arrived after the Trump administration pulled direct funding for Alzheimer’s, HIV and cancer research at various universities.
Several of the new terminations were listed as saving the federal government little or no money. The axing of one grant to the University of Alabama at Birmingham saved 33 cents, according to DOGE’s data.
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Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.