The federal office charged with improving minority health has terminated more than half its active grants — 16 awards worth $38 million over four years — as the Trump administration redirects the money toward infertility and exercise, NOTUS reported Sept. 4.
HHS’s Office of Minority Health sent the termination letters Aug. 25, telling 16 county, state and nonprofit grantees that their awards no longer advance “current agency priorities,” according to NOTUS, which obtained the letters. The grantees had already received the first two of four years of funding.
Going forward, the letters said, awards should “reduce overmedicalization in healthcare by addressing the root causes of infertility” — naming hormonal imbalances, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, low sperm count, low testosterone and erectile dysfunction — or promote “regular physical activity and exercise.”
The letters were signed by Eric West, acting chief grants officer in HHS’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, and Mahyar Mofidi, PhD, deputy assistant secretary for minority health.
Much of the canceled work sits in clinical and community health. Denver-based Illuminate Colorado sends nurses into the homes of minority women in the days after they give birth. Brooklyn-based Housing Works ran a “Food as Medicine” program that delivered food to 150 New Yorkers every other week and helped hypertension patients monitor their blood pressure at home. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock used its grant to reduce infant and maternal mortality among Black families in the Arkansas Delta, a program the university said likely will end.
Several grantees said they were surprised by the cancellations.
“It was news to us that maternal and infant fatality prevention wasn’t a priority,” Jillian Fabricius, co-executive director of Illuminate Colorado, told NOTUS.
The cuts extend a pattern of abrupt HHS grant terminations in 2026. In July, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality moved to end roughly 150 patient safety research grants. Thirty Democratic senators demanded HHS reverse the AHRQ grant cuts by Aug. 25, the same day the minority health letters went out.
The Office of Minority Health funded dozens of grants each year under the Biden administration before awards fell back to 2019 levels, according to NOTUS. The OMH website now lists just two funding opportunities for fiscal 2026. Beyond the 16 canceled awards, 13 grants funded last year appear unfunded this year, according to a public database NOTUS cited. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to eliminate the office in 2025 in a reorganization that shed about 20,000 employees. Congress declined the change.
Becker’s has reached out to HHS for comment and will update this story if more information becomes available.
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