In May 2025, the White House proposed reducing the budget of the National Institutes of Health by roughly 40%—from about $48 billion to $27 billion. Such a move would return NIH funding to levels last seen in 2007. Since NIH budget records began in 1938, NIH has seen only one previous double-digit cut: a 12% reduction in 1952.

Congress is now tasked with finalizing the budget ahead of the new fiscal year, which begins October 1. In July, the Senate rejected the White House’s proposed cuts and instead advanced a modest increase. And in early September, the House of Representatives also supported a budget that maintains the agency’s current funding levels.

However, talk of cutting NIH funding is not a new development. Such proposals tend to resurface from time to time, and the ongoing discussion has created uncertainty about the stability of research overall and prompted concern among scientists about the future of their work.

As researchers studying complex health policy systems—and specifically, science funding policy—we see the NIH as one node in an interconnected system that supports the discovery of new knowledge, trains the biomedical workforce, and makes possible medical and public health advances across the U.S.

Our research shows that while cutting NIH funding may appear to save money in the short term, it can trigger a chain of effects that increase long-term healthcare costs and slow the development of new treatments and public health solutions over time.

NIH funding does not just support the work of individual researchers and laboratories. It shapes the foundation of American science and healthcare by training scientists, supporting preventive health research, and creating the knowledge that biomedical companies can later build into new products.

To understand how funding cuts may affect scientific progress, the training of new researchers, and the availability of new treatments, we took a broad look at existing evidence. We reviewed studies and data that connect NIH funding, or biomedical research more generally, to outcomes such as innovation, workforce development, and public health.

In a study published in July 2025, we built a simple framework to show how changes in one part of the system—research grants, for example—can lead to changes in others, like fewer training........

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