The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which has been instrumental in raising awareness about and improving patient safety, has mostly been shut down by the Trump administration through severe cuts to staff and grant allocations.

As reported by KFF Health News , AHRQ’s Grant Management Office informed researchers in a letter six weeks ago that it was halting at least 104 grants . Although Congress appropriated $345 million for AHRQ for this fiscal year, the agency has spent less than $15 million on grants and hasn’t issued a new one in more than a year. Moreover, roughly 75% of agency staffers have been sacked or quit since President Trump took office in 2025.

Broadly, the research conducted by AHRQ aims at uncovering and reducing medical errors, improving patient outcomes and providing evidence-based information to clinicians, policymakers and the general public. The research can help answer practical questions about how healthcare can be safer, more effective and more affordable.

Canceled or non-renewed projects included work on managing high-risk pregnancies and hypertension screening, antibiotic resistance, overmedication of children and the use of digital health tools. These cuts are surprising given AHRQ’s uncontroversial mission and its apparent overlap with the Trump administration’s priorities around chronic disease as stipulated in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement spearheaded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Discontinuing most of AHRQ’s grantmaking jeopardizes work that’s been credited with saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars in healthcare costs.

AHRQ is housed under the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s been formally known as AHRQ since 1999, when its name changed from its predecessor, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, which was established in 1989.

Notably, the agency also runs the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force , a panel whose assessments on the clinical benefits of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical procedures determine whether health insurers are required to cover them. Under HHS Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, key members of the advisory panel have been dismissed and meetings cancelled.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard has indicated that AHRQ seeks to establish a new “framework” for grants, though it’s unclear what this entails. Perhaps this means that what’s being observed is a temporary pause in grantmaking rather than a permanent stoppage. HHS has characterized the terminations as a matter of statutory discretion, saying the AHRQ director determines whether continuation of funding serves the federal government’s interests. HHS went on to state that certain grants were not renewed, presumably because they didn’t align with administration priorities.

AHRQ isn’t the first agency to go under the knife. An independent entity, the United States Agency for International Development, was largely gutted during the first two months of the current Trump administration. The USAID undertakes a wide range of activities, which include among other things food aid and distribution (often in war zones), clean water provision, maternal and infant health support, mass administration of rehydration salts for children suffering from diarrhea, malaria prevention and treatments and polio vaccinations in countries where the disease is still endemic.

And then there is the ongoing disruption at other research agencies , including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. This April, the Trump administration removed all members of the board of advisers that oversees the NSF. Its grantmaking had already been curbed severely since the start of the new fiscal year.