The order covers more than 40 awards to researchers around the country seeking to understand why vaccine acceptance has declined. 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.