There’s a sense of unease, says Daan Westra, an assistant professor at the Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI). He frequently speaks with American colleagues, as the US dominates his field of healthcare management. “Some 75 per cent of published articles come from North America. I’ve noticed a shift towards uncertainty, and that’s new. During Trump’s first term, there was a sense of resignation – people thought they just had to sit it out. Now, everything is changing so fast. Our field has always been influenced by politics, but major legislative changes, like the introduction of Obamacare to expand health insurance coverage for Americans, were known well in advance. Now, I have no idea what things will look like a year from now. No one does. I know people who had financial meetings scheduled, only to be told they were no longer necessary because no one knows which projects will still receive funding.”
Budget cuts
This financial uncertainty stems largely from budget cuts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest US funder of medical and biomedical research. After temporarily freezing almost the entire budget, the Trump administration now plans to slash “indirect costs” from 50-60 per cent down to 15 per cent. This would leave no budget for expenses such as administrative support or laboratory maintenance. A federal judge has blocked the proposed cuts for now.
“The uncertainty is the worst part”, says a UM alum who now works at an American university. She prefers to remain anonymous: “This administration has already gone to such extremes that you just don’t know if speaking to the press will have consequences.” PhD students and postdocs are in a particularly precarious position, she explains. “All our research proposals are currently under review. We don’t know which projects will continue, which means we don’t know if PhD positions will be available. We risk losing a whole cohort of talented researchers.” Sinan Gülöksüz, an associate professor in UM’s department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology who is affiliated with Yale School of Medicine, has already seen this firsthand. “Several PhD students who had already been accepted have now been told they can’t come after all.”
Massive layoffs
European partners are also feeling the effects, says Kasia Czabanowska, a professor in International Health at CAPHRI. “We collaborate with Indiana University on a master’s programme in public health, but I’ve heard they’re going to admit fewer students. And what about their job prospects? Many of our graduates go on to work at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or in government positions. Both are seeing massive layoffs.”
Thousands of federal government employees in the US have already lost their jobs, and the impact is being felt across the country, says Westra. “We’re organising a joint conference in Europe this year, but some of my American colleagues aren’t sure if they’ll be able to attend. They need to renew their passports to get a visa, but everything is taking much longer than usual because of all the layoffs.”
Data access
The US withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO) also has financial consequences for European researchers, says Czabanowska. “We had to withdraw a European research proposal because the funding is no longer available. And a special issue of an academic journal, which was to be funded by the WHO, will likely be cancelled.” But she is even more concerned about new restrictions on data transfers. “What if another pandemic breaks out? The CDC is already facing limitations in collecting data, let alone sharing them internationally.”
Gülöksüz, too, is uncertain about European institution’s continued access to US data. “A new version of the ABCD Data Repository, a major resource for psychiatric and neurological research, was supposed to be released in January, but it wasn’t. They’re not currently accepting new requests, so it’s possible that soon only American universities will have access. On top of that, it looks like any research related to LGBTQIA+, gender and race/ethnicity is now being treated as taboo, when the US used to be far ahead of Europe in collecting data in these fields.”
Return to Europe
The UM alum has noticed this change as well. “I felt like we’d finally reached a point where everyone recognised the importance of diversity – something that, in my view, shouldn’t even be seen as political – but we’re rapidly regressing to where we were fifteen years ago. Paradoxically, we’re required by law to explain in our research proposals how we try to make science more accessible. I’m not too worried about funding for my own research, which is fundamental and apolitical, but all my proposals emphasise the importance of women in STEM and my contribution to that.”
She is now seriously considering returning to Europe. But would that really be a solution? Gülöksüz isn’t so sure. “Budget cuts to research and education are happening everywhere. And with so many other alarming issues going on in the world, people may not even see this as a major concern for long.”