Member Alert: Cuts to NIH Funding

Dear [[FIRSTNAME]] [[LASTNAME]],

Funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in danger: the administration has cut $2.7 billion appropriated by Congress in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 for NIH research. The administration proposed a 40% cut to NIH in FY 2026 and a major reorganization of NIH - reducing it from 27 institutes to eight - and has started executing this reorganization without providing proper notice to Congress. Currently, many researchers are unable to draw down funds, and over 2,600 grants have been canceled outright.

Cuts to NIH and the proposed reorganization will affect all current and future researchers, patients, and clinicians. We are calling on AUGS members to let their members of Congress know how these threats to NIH are affecting their research, patients, communities, and the future research workforce.

In coordination with the Women First Research Coalition (WFRC) we are urging Congress to protect the NIH now and provide the agency with at least $51.303 billion in the next fiscal year. It is imperative that all Senators and Representatives hear from their constituents about the importance of funding NIH. Many congressional offices are not aware how this administration's policies are affecting their states and constituents.

We need Congress to:

Protect FY 2025 funding for the NIH from impoundments;
Provide robust funding for the agency in FY 2026; and
Exercise its oversight authority over any reorganization to ensure that any changes protect the full spectrum of medical research.

Below and attached, please find a template message to send to your members of Congress asking them to protect NIH funding and to exercise their oversight authority over any reorganization.

Find Your Representative

Thank you for your advocacy and please let us know if you have any questions!

Letter to Hill:

As a constituent and a member of the Women First Research Coalition who cares deeply about improving women's health, I am concerned about cuts to research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), policies being implemented that have prevented the release of appropriated funds for peer-reviewed grants, and a potential reorganization of the agency that is not being conducted transparently. Continued disruption will make the NIH - the world's leader in medical research - ineffective and inefficient.

Without immediate Congressional intervention, I am extremely concerned that the NIH will not be able to deliver grant funds by the end of the fiscal year, resulting in an effective impoundment. This would delay or halt life-saving research, disrupt clinical trials and networks, cause loss of jobs, and force early-stage investigators and trainees to consider alternatives to medical research careers, threatening our competitive edge in scientific discovery. The premature end to in-progress research studies would also waste substantial taxpayer funds on incomplete projects. I urge you to contact HHS and NIH to ensure that NIH reestablishes effective processes for the distribution of funds following regular peer review processes to support new and ongoing meritorious research proposals.

I am also extremely concerned that NIH is being asked by HHS to implement substantial cuts for FY 2025, develop restructuring plans, and implement policy changes without transparency and absent any Congressional oversight. We ask Congress to exercise its oversight authority immediately and have HHS halt any pending changes to the reorganization of NIH and instead provide a scientific and policy rationale for these changes with an opportunity for Congress and stakeholder comment to preserve the agency's essential functions and full range of research on conditions affecting Americans across the lifespan continues.

Finally, I urge you to reject the administration's request to cut NIH funding to $27.9 billion in FY 2026 and support the NIH with at least $51.303 billion in Fiscal Year 2026. If these cuts are realized, the bipartisan investments that Congress has made in NIH over the years will be eroded, setting science and the country's biomedical research enterprise back for decades resulting in fewer new cures and poorer health for Americans. Should this funding be cut off-and ultimately impounded-it will take years for NIH and the country's biomedical research community to recover.

I am grateful for the bipartisan support Congress has given NIH in the past and urge you to protect NIH by providing steady, sustainable support for biomedical research now and in FY26. Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,