In the News

What’s the best way to care for a new mom dealing with high blood pressure and risk to her heart?

How can people stem the tide of opioid abuse in rural Massachusetts?

Both are questions that doctors at Baystate Health are working to answer with the help of funding from the National Institutes of Health. The Springfield institution holds 14 active research projects with NIH, receiving funding worth more than $7.7 million, according to a database available on government web servers.

That funding is now in question due to directives from the President Donald Trump administration.

Also in Springfield, Western New England University has received $423,700 from NIH in 2024 for a three-year study targeting neuroblastoma, a pediatric cancer notorious for its resistance to existing therapies. About 50% of children diagnosed with stage 4 of the disease do not survive for five years, according to Western New England.

Colleges and hospitals in the 1st Congressional District have $10 million in NIH funding for 21 projects.

The neighboring 2nd Congressional District – which includes Amherst and Worcester – has 616 research projects under NIH totaling more than $334 million.

The funding is imperiled by the Trump administration and the work of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.

State attorneys general have sued – including Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell – and won a temporary stay from a judge. A hearing is set for Feb. 21.

The Trump administration proposal, so far blocked by the courts, would limit NIH research funding for “indirect costs,” or costs for facilities and administration, to 15%.

UMass Amherst will receive approximately $44.8 million in funding from NIH. Of that amount, approximately $13.1 million is for indirect costs, based on the NIH federal indirect cost rate of 61%, the university said.

U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, said support for preserving allocated NIH funding is growing among House and Senate members of both parties.

“This generally has been a funding mechanism, NIH, that has received bipartisan support over the years,” Neal said Thursday in an interview.

President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and George H.W. Bush, a Republican, each expanded funding.

“If you have Parkinson’s disease, cancer, diabetes ... you can be sure that NIH is the best institution to find a treatment,” Neal said.

Neal said there are at present 56 lawsuits filed against Trump actions. That includes the attorneys general action to protect NIH funding.

“The most important thing Congress can do is to assert its constitutional obligation to oppose these measures,” he said.

But there is an arithmetic problem, Neal said. Democrats are in the minority of both chambers, although the GOP lead in the House is slim.

Neal said he’s heartened by recent comments from Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Katie Britt of Alabama.

In Neal’s 1st Congressional District, other schools receiving funding include Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, with with three projects totaling $1.3 million.

Williams College in the Berkshires was promised funding for two projects totaling $872,000. Regene LLC, a Springfield biotechnology company with ties to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was awarded $250,000 to research anti-aging therapies that could fight dementia.

Baystate Health, the largest health care provider in the region, faces its own budget woes having just announced a second round of layoffs.

Baystate said that like other institutions it is monitoring the situation in Washington, D.C.

“In early December, we met with our entire federal delegation in Washington, D.C., to alert them to how the wide-ranging impact of changes to research funding, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Medicaid program, and other spending cuts would impact health care organizations, including Baystate,” according to a statement provided by spokesperson Heather Duggan.

“We will continue to advocate vigorously with our partners at the federal and state levels to ensure appropriate and essential health care funding for hardworking families and safety net health care providers across Western Massachusetts,” the statement said.

The UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester received $236 million in NIH grant awards, according to the database.

Neal said he’s supportive of those programs. Their impact overlaps his district and that of U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester.

UMass officials let members of Congress know last week that the funding is a high priority. Campus chancellors, along with UMass President Marty Meehan, traveled to D.C. Meehan was a congressman for 14 years.

Elsewhere in the 2nd Congressional District, Smith College in Northampton has seven projects totaling $2 million in NIH funding.

In fiscal year 2023, NIH funding generated more than $90 billion in economic activity in the United States.

In Massachusetts that same year, the NIH awarded $3.5 billion in grants in contracts that directly supported 28,842 jobs and nearly $7.5 billion in economic activity, according to a news release from the U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.