WORCESTER—Earlier this week, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey visited UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester to draw attention to the growing impacts of federal funding delays and cuts to critical biomedical research.
Standing alongside school and city leaders, Healey focused on the significant economic and clinical stakes of losing support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
UMass Chan received $193 million in NIH funding last year, but school officials now anticipate a shortfall of approximately $30 million due to ongoing delays in new grant awards since the start of the new federal administration in January.
“We need to make clear what’s at stake here,” Healey said during her visit, according to a statement issued by the school. “The funding cuts are very extensive, including supporting critical work in gene therapy, rare disease research, HIV research, digital medicine, neuroscience and more. UMass Chan has held groundbreaking clinical trials of new genetic therapies for devastating conditions like ALS and so many other diseases. But this kind of progress is now at risk, and with that, hope is being stripped away from patients and families.”
To help absorb the loss and brace for continued uncertainty, UMass Chan reports that it has enacted a range of austerity measures: significantly reducing the incoming class of the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, freezing all hiring and discretionary spending, pausing faculty recruitment, and laying off or furloughing an estimated 200 employees.
In addition to the current funding delays, the NIH has proposed a cap on indirect costs that, if implemented, would further reduce support to the medical school by $50 million next year. That cap is being challenged in a multi-state lawsuit co-led by the Massachusetts attorney general.
Gov. Healey was joined during her visit by UMass Chan Chancellor Michael F. Collins, Department of Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein, Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty, and Nobel Laureate Craig Mello, among others. Healey emphasized that the situation not only threatens cutting-edge research but also the state’s economy. UMass Chan employs more than 6,000 people and contributes more than $2 billion annually to the Massachusetts economy.
Have news, tips, or a story worth telling? Reach Editor Charlene Arsenault at carsenault@theworcesterguardian.org—because good stories (and great scoops) deserve to be shared.
