Exclusive: HHS is now weighing in on science in NIH grants
Staffers say comments coming after NIH's own approvals are overriding peer review
- 1 Jun 2026
- 5:05 PM ET
- By Jocelyn Kaiser
The Department of Health and Human Services is now recommending changes to peer-reviewed National Institutes of Health grants.E. Billman/Science
Not long after President Donald Trump started his second term, many scientists funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) began to be asked by the agency to strip certain words from their grants, sparking cries of research censorship and politicization. Now, their projects are facing an even higher level of scrutiny from the Trump administration. According to documents viewed by Science, all grants approved by NIH for funding are now going through an extra screening at its parent body, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Staffers there who may be political appointees and not necessarily subject matter experts sometimes ask for substantive changes in the research.
Some NIH career employees involved in the grant-review process say the HHS requests are unprecedented and alarming. “The U.S. scientific community and the broader American public should be deeply concerned by the fact that HHS is overriding peer review to require changes to research scope, design, and language,” says Jenna Norton, an NIH program officer who stresses she is speaking in her personal capacity, not on behalf of NIH. (Norton was put on leave last fall after leading protests against Trump administration actions, but has since been reinstated.)
The extra layer of review includes both new proposals that NIH deemed worth funding and ongoing grants awaiting their annual payment. HHS reviewers in several cases have even asked for changes in the work to be conducted near the end of a multiyear grant when a course correction would be impossible, according to NIH staffers who spoke with Science on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.
The number of NIH grants in which HHS has demanded changes is unclear, although the practice does not appear widespread. And Science has not learned of any specific proposal that was not funded as a result. Still, the extra HHS review adds to other factors delaying NIH's grant decisions, including staff shortages and a backlog from last year's federal shutdown. The agency is far behind its usual pace of grantmaking at this point in the fiscal year—although NIH says it has picked up the pace and will spend all of its budget before this fiscal year ends on 30 September.
An HHS spokesperson said on background that NIH staff are still making final grant decisions, and that requests like those coming from HHS are routine. “It is not unusual for NIH staff to suggest changes to research plans in the interest of strengthening new or ongoing research programs,” the spokesperson said.
Even before this new HHS review was instituted, NIH grant proposals and renewals had begun to receive extra scrutiny, starting around when health economist Jay Bhattacharya took over as director in April 2025. After a proposal is peer reviewed and receives institute approval for funding, or an ongoing grant is cleared for its yearly payment, an NIH office now uses a computational tool to scan publicly available language about each grant for politically sensitive words such as “gender,” “equity,” and “diversity.” It also looks for those words in the nonpublic description of the research aims. (Certain multiyear grants seeking their annual renewals are currently exempt from the review.)
That office then sends spreadsheets of flagged grants to each institute, which must then renegotiate the grants with the applicants to replace or remove the words. Some proposals flagged by the computational tool are later deemed false positives because a term such as “diversity” was used to describe something noncontroversial, such as a cell population.
It now appears that since mid-April, grants have been going to HHS for another layer of review. One internal NIH communication Science has seen states that proposals newly approved for funding are sent at the end of each day to “HHS Counselor,” apparently a reference to the office of HHS Chief Counselor Chris Klomp. NIH staffers say HHS, too, seems to be using a computational tool to screen the grants. But in addition to flagging sensitive terms, HHS is in some cases asking for substantive changes to the research.
For example, according to documentation seen by Science:
- In a project studying factors contributing to depression using many years of observational data from large cohorts, the HHS review recommended adding genetic influences. The project was in its fourth year, when such changes were likely not feasible.
- HHS asked that an ongoing grant proposing to study obesity in a minority group more clearly explain why certain “stressors” might influence weight. The grant was approved after the investigator added more stressors and other potential factors and described other health outcomes in addition to obesity.
- An ongoing study of a health matter in a certain occupation focused on a minority population. The commenter asked whether a specific health problem was more common with this group or its members responded differently to an intervention. The investigator added explanations in response.
In another case described to Science by an NIH program officer, HHS requested the investigator add a new analysis to a study examining factors contributing to obesity in a minority population.
Sometimes, the demands make no sense, NIH staffers say. For example, HHS wanted a scientist training grant in its final year to add a clinical trial—work these awards by definition do not support. “It’s an absolutely bonkers comment,” a program officer says.
Correction, 2 June, 1:30 p.m.: This text has been revised to reflect that two grants described as new were actually continuations of grants.
doi: 10.1126/science.z3jtaus
