A congressional justification letter released last week by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, offers the most detailed insight to date into how the Trump administration’s proposed $18.1 billion reduction in NIH funding could affect the agency’s structure and operations in fiscal year (FY) 2026. The justification letter advances the administration’s plan to eliminate or consolidate the agency’s 27 institutes and centers into eight. This would include reorganizing the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases; and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases into a new National Institute on Body Systems (NIBS). The new NIBS would see a 39.3% decrease in funding compared with FY 2025. NIH released individual budget justifications for NIBS and the other institutes. Bhattacharya also outlined a planned $11.6 billion reduction (43.4%) in funding for research project grants in FY 2026, including a $1.95 billion reduction in funding for research project grants for NIBS. According to NIH, this would result in 8,148 fewer new grants awarded compared with FY 2025. The plan also includes a $359.3 million cut (35.4%) to researcher training programs, which would reduce the number of full-time trainee positions by an estimated 6,669 in FY 2026.
Interesting review on the successes of the NIDDK in CJASN @asnpublications.bsky.social
journals.lww.com/cjasn/fullte... from @conniemrhee.bsky.social Michael Allon @rajmehrotra.bsky.social
Just as NIDDK will be collapsed into the NIBS
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