US — The Trump administration canceled at least three grants intended to study how discrimination affects long-term brain health. The grant cancellations affected Emory University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Researchers were notified of the grant cancellations by the end of July 2026. The canceled grants represent a total of $15m in funding.

Negar Fani, associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University, co-led one of the canceled projects that studied the impact of racial discrimination on the white matter of the brain. Grants expected in January and February 2026 at Emory University and the University of Pittsburgh were not awarded until June 2026. Funds awarded in June 2026 contained new termination language.

"We were running on fumes until we could get the second year of funds; those came in June, but the termination followed one month later," Fani said. "At the time, we were basically trying to run the study on a shoestring, and a lot of people didn’t get paid." She added that the rationale provided was that self-reported measures are not scientifically valid, which she argued would rule out a large portion of the entire field. "We ask people about their trauma, and symptoms, and depression, to lifestyle, to their reports about alcohol and substance abuse, their reports about physical pain and medication usage," Fani said. "Those perceptions get under the skin, into the brain, and affect in real ways health."

Andrea Rosso, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, co-led a grant canceled by the administration that studied how Alzheimer’s disease risk was affected in people who live in divested, predominantly African American neighborhoods. "Whoever was doing this saw the words they didn’t like in our grant," Rosso said. She noted that her team does not actually measure structural racism but uses it as a framing for why one population is at such high risk.

"We can’t come up with an intervention that’s going to stop structural racism – wish we could," Rosso said. "Those things we’re measuring are scientifically valid concepts."

Ann Cohen, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, led a canceled grant that studied socially driven Alzheimer’s disease risk factors by collecting surveys, brain imaging and blood samples. "This kind of clear political interference – that’s not a good way to do science," Cohen said. She expressed frustration with the assertion that the outcomes were not measurable or scientific.

"What’s most frustrating to me about all of this is this assertion that – in the most basic way – the assertion that our outcomes are not measurable or scientific," Cohen said. "[It] demonstrates a lack of understanding of our outcomes versus our exposures – that’s epidemiology 101." She added that she had not focused on the motivation because the decision was so scientifically wrong. "I haven’t even thought much about the why this is being done because it’s so scientifically wrong that I can’t get past that piece," she said.

NIH Director Dr Jay Bhattacharya stated in letters that the project no longer effectuates NIH’s priorities. He wrote that the lack of concrete, objective and measurable variables is not in alignment with NIH’s priorities. Jayanta Bhattacharya has served as the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health since 2025.

An estimated 7.4 million people in the US live with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Black Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.