What happens to health research when 'women' is a banned word?
Trump's federal funding cuts are shutting down studies on Alzheimer’s care, uterine fibroids and pregnancy risks — all because they focus on gender.
By
Shefali Luthra, Barbara Rodriguez
Published
March 27, 2025, 5:00 a.m. CT
Daniella Fodera got an unusually early morning call from her research adviser this month: The doctoral student’s fellowship at Columbia University had been suddenly terminated.
Fodera sobbed on phone calls with her parents. Between the fellowship application and scientific review process, she had spent a year of her life securing the funding, which helped pay for her study of the biomechanics of uterine fibroids — tissue growths that can cause severe pain, bleeding and even infertility. Uterine fibroids, an underresearched condition, impact up to 77 percent of women as they age.
“I’m afraid of what it means for women’s health,” Fodera said. “I’m just one puzzle piece in the larger scheme of what is happening. So me alone, canceling my funding will have a small impact — but canceling the funding of many will have a much larger impact. It will stall research that has been stalled for decades already. For me, that’s sad and an injustice.”
Fodera’s work was a casualty of new federal funding cuts at Columbia University, one of several schools targeted by the Trump administration. The administration is also reducing the workforce at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency that oversees public health research, while trying to slash NIH funding to universities.
Researchers say threats to federal research funding and President Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate any policy promoting “diversity, equity and inclusion” are threatening a decades-long effort to improve how the nation studies the health of women and queer people, or improve treatments for the medical conditions that affect them. Agency employees have been warned not to approve grants that include words such as “women,” “trans” or “diversity.”
More:
https://19thnews.org/2025/03/women-lgbtq-health-research-trump-funding/
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