Senator Collins Presses Secretary Kennedy on Funding for Women’s Health, Biomedical Research

Q&A on the Declining Number of NIH Women's Health Studies

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Q&A on Indirect Research Costs

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Washington, D.C. - At a hearing to review the Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Appropriations Committee, questioned Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the declining number of women's health research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the Administration cancels diversity-related grants. Senator Collins also stressed that Congress decisively rejected the Administration's cuts to biomedical research funding last year and urged the Secretary to work with Senators across the aisle to ensure the U.S. continues to lead in biomedical research and technological innovation.

Q&A on the Decline in NIH Women's Health Studies

Sen. Collins: Yesterday, the Washington Post published a story on NIH grants, which documented a 31% decline in the number of research projects funded in 2025 that included the word "women." I brought up this exact issue with the NIH Director at a recent hearing before the HELP Committee, because the Administration's emphasis on canceling diversity-related grants has resulted in less research aimed at women's health.

It is well established that disparities in women's health exist. For example, the incidence of Alzheimer's disease is higher in women than in men, and it is not explainable by the fact that women live longer than men. There are also disparities within the female population. For example, pregnant women who are black have a higher maternal morbidity rate than white women, while Asian women have a better outcome than white women.

Yet it appears that the Administration is [not] looking at these health disparities, is pulling back from these grants, instead of figuring out why these health disparities exist and how to address them. I know that your budget request notes the importance of continued investment in maternal health, but how are you going to address other health disparities in women's health, such as the disproportionate burden of autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's disease, as I've mentioned, if diversity is no longer a criterion in making funding decisions?

Sec. Kennedy: Senator, thank you for that question. We're about to announce in the next coming weeks a major program, a major investment by ARPA to study Alzheimer's and to focus on new treatments, and preventative treatments, and ways to reverse Alzheimer's. There are many, many grants at NIH now studying Alzheimer's and diabetes. We're focusing for the first time on chronic disease and its etiology, which has been neglected by that agency for many generations.

We're going to identify the causes of chronic disease and how to eliminate the exposures that are generating this giant epidemic. We're focusing on maternal health, and I can read you a whole list of programs that we're doing on maternal health right now. And you're right, we have the worst maternal health outcomes of any of the western countries, and a college-educated black woman is two and a half times more likely to die in from maternal health mortality than a college-educated white woman.

One of the programs we have now is the perinatal pilot program, where we've enrolled 220 hospitals. In one year, we've dropped the rate of maternal mortality by 42 percent. Nobody has ever done that before, and we're now trying to extend those protocols to all other hospitals.

Sen. Collins: I appreciate those efforts. I still think we have a problem if grants are being scanned for the word "women" and then clawed back or not funded. So, I hope you look more broadly, even though I support the initiatives that you've mentioned.

Q&A on Indirect Research Costs

Sen. Collins: As you have heard from the subcommittee chair, there has been strong bipartisan support on this entire committee for the investment in biomedical research. In fact, it's hard to think of an investment that pays greater dividends to American families than that investment, because it leads to lifesaving and life-enhancing discoveries.

The Administration's budget, much to my dismay, once again, proposes an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all, 15 percent cap on indirect research costs, despite the fact that Congress blocked an identical proposal last year that originated with OMB. Such a cap would harm cutting-edge research happening at universities and other nonprofit laboratories and medical centers across the country and undermine the foundation for our nation's global leadership in biomedical research and technological innovation.

Mr. Secretary, rather than continue to pursue a policy that Congress clearly rejected-both sides of the aisle, both chambers-will you work with us and the research committee to find a better way to increase transparency and accountability that does not come at the expense of crucial biomedical research?

Sec. Kennedy: Absolutely, I look forward to working with you, Senator. I would say this--nobody in my agency wants to cut any of these agencies, any of these programs. And I don't think Russ Vought wants to cut them either. But we have a $39 trillion debt, and all of the agencies across the government have been asked to tighten their belt.

In my agency, I have been asked to cut 12%, and all of these cuts are painful. But we are at the cutting edge right now in terms of revolutionizing biomedical research in our country. We're losing our lunch to China. Last year, 50 percent of the new drugs that were approved were from China. It went from 3 percent of the clinical trials to 30 percent, and another 30 percent are going to Australia. So, we're losing our IP, we're losing our best researchers, we're losing our scientists, and we're losing ground in terms of our biosecurity.

These are all things that we are focused on. We are compressing the pathways to approval and compressing clinical trials. I think I'm out of time, but I will talk more about that later.