US National Institutes of Health will stop funding climate health research
BMJ 2025; 388 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r615 (Published 27 March 2025) Cite this as: BMJ 2025;388:r615
Research into the effects of climate change on human health will no longer be funded by the US health department’s research arm, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said a memo distributed to staffers last week and seen by the news website ProPublica.1
A later memo, smuggled out of the NIH on a phone screenshot, adds climate change to a list of research subjects already dropped by the NIH, including “DEI” studies that look at racial differences in health outcomes, studies of gay and transgender health, studies involving South Africa, and research into vaccine hesitancy.2
The shutdown on future research follows last month’s closure of the three main existing programmes run by the NIH: the Climate Change and Health Initiative, the Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center, and the Climate and Health Scholars Program.
It also follows last week’s announcement by the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin,3 who submitted a “reduction in force” plan to the White House that would also shut down the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research arm, the Office of Research and Development. As many as 75% of its staff would be fired.
Mass deletions
The end of climate health research across the US government has also been accompanied by the deletion of thousands of web pages that provided research findings, data, and analytical tools, in a broad effort to scrub any mention of climate change.
Scientists have scrambled to save the work and, in some cases, to present it elsewhere.4 While much of the data gathering was funded by taxpayers and mandated by Congress, the requirement to show it to the public was not part of the mandate—an omission seized on by the Trump administration.
A coalition of farming and environmental groups are suing the Department of Agriculture to compel restoration of climate data to the agency’s website. The agriculture department has also shut down its climate science programmes.
A similar lawsuit last month forced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to restore its social vulnerability index, which maps the United States on the basis of a range of factors affecting health, including local exposure to pollution and climate effects. The restored page now bears a banner from the Trump administration. “Per a court order, HHS [the US health department] is required to restore this website,” it says. “This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”5
Also deleted but saved elsewhere was the final NIH report on its three main climate programmes, closed last month. “As climate change related disasters and exposures become more frequent and detrimental to human health, NIH must continue to undertake the research needed to understand and address the health impacts of our changing climate,” it said.6