Excerpt from WAMU:

Communities in Montgomery County and beyond continue to feel the effects of mass layoffs and funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health, either directly or through the decline of scientific research.

“Grants that focus on HIV and vaccine research have been cut … and then also grants for programs focused on the health of racial or gender minorities,” KFF Health News correspondent Rae Ellen Bichell told WAMU’s Morning Edition host Esther Ciammachilli.

In D.C., some of those cuts have also come to the Whitman-Walker Institute, which specializes in providing health care regionally to LGBTQ+, Black, and Latine communities as well as people living with HIV.

Kellan Baker, Whitman-Walker’s executive director for health and research policy, told KFF Health News that they received some “very nasty letters” from the federal government accusing the organization of using federal dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that were unscientific. Baker disputes the categorization, and says it has led to a delay in Whitman-Walker’s plans to build a new research center in Southeast D.C. that would expand HIV treatment and prevention there.

Bichell reported on the national impact of the NIH cuts for KFF Health News and joined Ciammachilli to talk about their local and national impact.

Read the full article here:

https://wamu.org/story/25/06/11/dc-funding-cuts-nih-hiv-research/