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The past two years have presented challenges for the institutions and researchers conducting biomedical research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that are unprecedented in the history of the agency, according to a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
Disruptions in grants, slowdowns in awarding funds, and shifts in agency policies and priorities have left institutions scrambling to adapt their research programs. While the NIH obligated all allocated funds prior to the end of both fiscal year (FY) 2025 and FY 2026, examining the funding activities of the past 24 months illustrates the continuous uncertainty research institutions are facing, according to authors of the report, Alyssa Browne, Ph.D., senior analyst, research and data science at AAMC, Anurupa Dev, Ph.D., science policy and strategy director at AAMC, and Heather Pierce, J.D., MPH, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at AAMC.
The departure from years of stability in historical funding trends and processes have caused interruptions to experiments and clinical trials, led to reductions in staffing and graduate program enrollment, and created widespread concerns about the health of the federally funded biomedical research enterprise. The report’s researchers used publicly available data from NIH RePORTER and Grant Witness to examine changes in the NIH funding environment over the past two fiscal years.
More than 80% of the NIH budget every year is allocated for extramural research funding, which means completing educational courses or programs outside the physical walls or main campus of a school, college, or university. Investigators apply for these funding opportunities, the NIH reviews applications through the rigorous peer review process, and the agency issues notices of award (NOAs) to the applications that are selected for funding. During the past two years, not only has the NIH issued significantly fewer NOAs, but the time from application to award issuance has increased, according to the report’s authors.
The decrease in the number of awards funded between FYs 2024, 2025, and 2026 was consistent across funding mechanisms: the number of research project grants (RPGs), other research and development grants, research training and career development grants, and all other grants fell between FY 2024 and FY 2025 and fell again between FY 2025 and FY 2026.
Between the government shutdown at the beginning of FY 2026 and a subsequent slow start to issuing competitive awards, the NIH had awarded 54% fewer competitive grants by the end of March 2026 compared to the same period in FY 2024 and 34% fewer compared to the same period in FY 2025. However, by the end of May 2026, the number of year-to-date FY 2026 competitive awards had surpassed FY 2025 levels, and by the end of the fiscal year, the NIH had awarded 15,680 competitive grants, 2% fewer than the FY 2024 total.
NIH extramural research funding kept pace with previous years in the first few months of FY 2025, but obligations slowed beginning in February 2025. As a result, FY 2025 year-to-date obligations fell approximately 20% less than FY 2024 levels from May through July of 2025.
