The National Institutes of Health will cancel or cut back dozens of grants for research on why some people are reluctant to be vaccinated and how to increase acceptance of vaccines, according to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post on Monday.
The email, titled “required terminations – 3/10/25,” shows that on Monday morning, the agency “received a new list … of awards that need to be terminated, today. It has been determined they do not align with NIH funding priorities related to vaccine hesitancy and/or uptake.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, has disparaged vaccines for years. He gained national notoriety over the past two decades by promoting misinformation about vaccines and a conjectured link to autism, drawing widespread condemnation from the scientific community.
It is unclear if Kennedy had a role, directly or indirectly, in the move to cancel these grants. But his ascendancy to HHS leadership has caused a stir in the research community. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another part of HHS, was asked by the Trump administration to launch a study into a possible connection between vaccines and autism, despite repeated research that shows no link between the two.
Spokespeople at NIH and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Monday’s email was sent by Michelle Bulls, director of the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration. It instructed NIH officials who dispense money to researchers around the country to send termination letters by the close of business Monday. It did not specify where the order originated.
For some studies that are partly about vaccine hesitancy and uptake, officials can offer the option of defunding only those activities, the email shows.
The termination notice should include the following language, according to the email: “It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment. … Therefore, the award is terminated.”
The email flagged more than 40 grants, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the new order.
It is an especially fraught time to be canceling research into vaccine hesitancy, some experts argued, with more than 200 cases of measles in 12 states and two deaths from the disease. Measles vaccination rates have declined among kindergartners in the United States since 2019. All states and the District require measles vaccinations for schoolchildren, but more parents are requesting exemptions, citing medical, religious or philosophical reasons.
“There is an urgent need to enhance vaccine acceptance behavior, especially due to the potential resurgence of measles and covid-19 still looming,” said Manoj Sharma, a professor of social and behavioral health at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, who had a CDC grant that ended last year to evaluate vaccine hesitancy.
Delesha Carpenter, a professor at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has had an NIH grant to focus on coronavirus vaccine hesitancy for three years, along with partners at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the University of South Carolina.
She has been bracing for the work to be upended, but she had not heard Monday afternoon whether her funding has been terminated.
“If we take away research on vaccine hesitancy, we’re also going to be taking away the ability to provide people with the best information about whether the vaccine is in their best interest,” Carpenter said. “They still have the decision to make.”
Michael Bronstein, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said his grant from the National Institute of Mental Health has not been affected, as far as he knows.
“From a public health perspective, preventing people from dying should be a government goal,” he said. “Vaccine hesitancy is one barrier to that.”
NIH, the world’s largest sponsor of biomedical research, has terminated more than a dozen grants related to China and transgender research, according to social media posts by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, which is leading government efforts to sharply cut spending and the size of the federal workforce.
Documents obtained by The Washington Post showed that last week, grants management staff were given guidance on how to terminate funding related to diversity, equity and inclusion. That guidance included “language provided to NIH by HHS providing examples for research activities that NIH no longer supports.”
Those topics included funding to Chinese universities; for diversity, equity and inclusion; and for transgender issues. The language used in the notices created anguish within NIH, according to several people familiar with the notices.
There are two active grants to Chinese universities listed in an NIH database.