AHRQ Grant Freeze Halts Patient Safety Research Nationwide

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has effectively halted most of its grantmaking under the Trump administration, jeopardizing research credited with saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars in health care costs over nearly 3 decades, according to KFF News.¹

The Agency Has Spent a Fraction of Its Appropriation

Although Congress appropriated $345 million for the AHRQ in fiscal year 2026, the agency has spent less than $15 million on grants and has not issued a new one in more than a year, according to a review of federal records cited in the report. In a July 15 letter, the AHRQ notified researchers that it was halting at least 104 grants, many of them focused on patient safety. About 75% of the agency's staff have been fired or resigned since President Donald Trump took office, according to HHS, leaving 74 employees compared with roughly 300 in early 2025.

Sources described the cuts as particularly puzzling given the AHRQ's noncontroversial mission and its overlap with the administration's own "Make America Healthy Again" priorities around chronic disease. Aaron Carroll, MD, MS, CEO of AcademyHealth, noted that the agency's research touches nearly every complaint patients have about the health system, including cost, access, quality, and errors in medical records.

Grant Terminations Span Patient Safety and Maternal Health

AHRQ Director Roger Klein, MD, JD, has said the agency's priorities include patient safety, antibiotic resistance, overmedication of children, digital health tools, and health disparities research grounded in "measurable health outcomes." A review of about 20 canceled grants found that nearly all aligned with those stated priorities, prompting researchers to question the rationale behind the cuts.

Terminated projects included a University of Connecticut program training rural clinicians to manage high-risk pregnancies, a Case Western Reserve University department's work on hypertension screening and reducing unnecessary testing in older adults, and a 5-year effort to cut CT scan use in children evaluated for appendicitis in community emergency departments. Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA, whose team helped develop the standardized patient experience surveys now used by CMS and health systems nationwide, said her $1 million annual grant for childbirth and behavioral health surveys was terminated by email after months of silence.

At the University of Minnesota, health care management professor Timothy Beebe, PhD, said he was denied $3 million of an expected $5-million, 5-year grant meant to train scientist-practitioners to move evidence-based practices into patient care more quickly, warning that the field risks "losing a generation of scholars" positioned to improve health care's return on investment.²

HHS has characterized the terminations as a matter of statutory discretion, saying the AHRQ director determines whether continuation funding serves the government's interest and that certain grants were not renewed rather than formally terminated, a distinction that could carry legal weight in pending litigation.¹ Carroll rejected that framing in a separate report, arguing that the practical effect on researchers is the same regardless of the label the agency uses.²

Termination letters reviewed by Inside Higher Ed cited the AHRQ's "current priorities" of patient safety, telehealth, antibiotic resistance, and similar areas, without explaining why individual projects fell outside them. The Society for General Internal Medicine sued Klein and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr last August, arguing that the failure to spend appropriated funds violates a 1974 law protecting Congress' budget authority; that case remains pending.¹

Broader Agency Functions Have Also Slowed

Beyond grants, the AHRQ's other core functions have stalled. The US Preventive Services Task Force, which issues coverage-determining assessments of drugs, vaccines, and procedures, has not met since March 2025 and now has 6 of its 16 previous members, although a meeting is scheduled for late August. Publication of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey has also slowed because Klein reportedly reviews every data release personally.

Klein has held no agencywide meetings and has not issued a public plan for the AHRQ's future, according to current and former staff, although he has suggested artificial intelligence could replace much of the agency's evidence review work. HHS disputed characterizations of Klein's leadership, saying the AHRQ is "strengthening its grants process" and aligning with its statutory mission.

For now, researchers say they are left without clarity on how, or whether, the AHRQ intends to resume funding the safety and quality research that has long been central to its mission.

References

1. Allen A. Trump has quietly throttled an agency devoted to the safety of American healthcare. KFF Health News. July 29, 2026. Accessed July 29, 2026. https://kffhealthnews.org/news/ahrq-funding-grants-trump-healthcare-safety-research-agency-hobbled/
2. Quinn R. An agency that supports health-care improvement cuts off grant funding. Inside Higher Ed. July 19, 2026. Accessed July 29, 2026. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/07/19/agency-supports-health-care-improvement-cuts