Feds may reinstate cancelled funding for signature women’s health study led by Fred Hutch

Days after the Department of Health and Human Services canceled contracts for an historic women-focused health initiative, the agency appears to have reversed itself and is restoring funding.

“These studies represent critical contributions to our better understanding of women’s health,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR.

The National Institutes of Health launched the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) in 1991 and more than 161,000 women participated in early studies. Some 42,000 women aged 78 to 108 are currently enrolled in WHI research and have been involved with the project for decades.

WHI is led by Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center and includes four regional centers: Stanford University, University of Buffalo, Ohio State University and Wake Forest University in North Carolina. The centers learned a week ago their contracts would end in September, and Fred Hutch could continue operations until January 2026, “after which time its funding remains uncertain,” the WHI said.

As of Monday morning, Dr. Garnet Anderson, senior vice president and director of the public health sciences division at Fred Hutch and a principal WHI investigator, said she had not been updated on the funding status.

“While we’d welcome the news that the decision on funding has been reversed, we have not yet received confirmation of this from Health and Human Services,” Anderson said in a statement to GeekWire.

The Trump administration has said it will cut Department of Health and Human Services contracts by 35%. The NIH, which is part of the department, “initially exceeded its internal targets for contract reductions,” Nixon told NPR on Thursday. “We are now working to fully restore funding to these essential research efforts.”

Washington Sen. Patty Murray and others roundly criticized the cuts and demanded the administration change course.

“Destroying the Women’s Health Initiative is an unbelievably shortsighted move that will have an immense long-term cost for our country — in undiscovered treatments and cures, the loss of vast amounts of data to improve women’s health, and a less healthy population overall,” Murray said last week.

Over more than three decades, WHI researchers have performed groundbreaking work, helping reduce rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease, and produced 2,400 scientific publications. The initiative was the first and is still the largest NIH study focused on women’s health. It has tackled breast cancer, bone disease and osteoporosis, and treatment for menopause.

WHI’s annual funding is currently just under $10 million, Science reported.

While WHI appears to have been spared the cuts, researchers around the nation continue warning about the deadly health impacts of Trump administration policies that are cutting funding for already approved and future grants.