Though the federal government has passed a funding bill increasing the budget available for the National Institutes of Health, the biomedical research powerhouse is still lagging behind previous years in the number of grants it is awarding. An analysis of grant data, conducted by a former NIH center director, reveals that the NIH has awarded 1,189 grants this fiscal year, compared to 2,322 at the same time last year.
The analysis used publicly available information and was performed by Jeremy Berg, Ph.D., who served as director of the NIH’s National Institute of General Medicine from 2003 to 2010. Berg shared the results in a series of posts on the social media website Bluesky on March 12.
Berg’s analysis considered new and competitive renewal grants awarded up to March 6. The figures for 2026 and 2025 both lag behind 2024, when 2,546 grants had been awarded at the analysis cutoff.
President Trump signed a new $1.2 trillion spending bill in early February that includes $49 billion for the NIH, an uptick in funding compared to previous years and a sharp departure from the $18 billion cut that Trump previously proposed for the agency.
Berg attributed the slow-walking of new NIH awards this year to three key factors. One is that grant proposals are still being screened for alignment with new agency priorities, as directed by NIH leader Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.
Another is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) may be restricting access to funds; Nature reported at the end of February that OMB is hamstringing funds for the NIH as well as the National Science Foundation and NASA.
A final reason given by Berg is the lack of leadership at the NIH, which has, like the rest of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), experienced significant job cuts and turnover during the second Trump administration. Directors of multiple NIH centers—including the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—have been ousted or stepped down.
Andrew Nixon, head of communications for the HHS, blamed the recent government shutdown for the NIH’s subdued grantmaking. That shutdown started on Oct. 1 and lasted until Nov. 12, becoming the longest federal shutdown in American history.
“Despite this disruption, NIH is currently only about 2% behind its normal pace,” Nixon said in a statement to Fierce. “This limited delay is a testament to NIH’s steadfast commitment to supporting rigorous, evidence-based, gold-standard science.”
Director Bhattacharya, now splitting his time between the NIH and the CDC, was grilled by senators last month over NIH grant terminations, which have hampered hundreds of clinical trials.
Despite all the recent turmoil, the NIH has still proven to be an economic boon for the U.S. A new report found that the agency generated $94.15 billion in economic activity and supported 390,863 jobs in 2025, providing a return of $2.57 for every $1 invested into it.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 2:15 p.m. ET with a statement from HHS.
