NIH director orders review of all grants, as new research priorities are announced

Staff at the US National Institutes of Health have been ordered to review all ongoing and proposed research for compliance with a new list of research priorities released by director Jay Bhattacharya.

“This review is already under way,” an NIH spokesperson confirmed to The BMJ. A previous review, which rated the compatibility of research projects with an earlier list of priorities released by the White House, led to thousands of grant cancellations and freezes, while thousands of new grant applications were put on hold, creating a large backlog.

Bhattacharya announced the NIH’s new “unified strategy” on 15 August. It lists 12 research priorities for the agency,1 most uncontroversial but with several aligned with the ideology of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement that supports Donald Trump.

The publicly announced strategy was accompanied by a covering letter to NIH staff, not released but later leaked, in which Bhattacharya ordered a fresh review of “all current and planned research activities,” including existing grants, new applications, and intramural research, to identify …