Key points
- School prepares to shrink affiliated non-profit JHPIEGO
- JHPIEGO has already stopped work on several projects
- Hopkins is a frequent recipient of research funding from NIH
ISLAMABAD: The US government has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, forcing the country’s top spender on research and development to contemplate layoffs and cancel health projects.
The Trump administration’s actions will likely dent the university’s efforts ranging from breastfeeding support initiatives in Baltimore to mosquito-net programmes in Mozambique, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The cuts, which are in addition to threatened trims to National Institutes of Health grants, are related to the university’s work with the US Agency for International Development.
The school is preparing to shrink its Baltimore-based affiliated nonprofit, JHPIEGO, that since the 1970s has worked closely with the USAID and has already stopped work on a number of international health projects, the American publication said.
Foreign aid contracts
Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels also confirmed he was preparing the Baltimore campus for the possibility of major cuts to programmes and staff after the seismic changes to federal funding.
Daniels’ letter to faculty, staff and students said more than $800 million in foreign aid contracts managed by the Hopkins School of Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Centre for Communication Programmes and the affiliated humanitarian aid group, Jhpiego, had been terminated.
“We have little choice”
According to the Baltimore Banner, it’s the first time the university has put a dollar figure to those cuts, which would be on top of $200 million per year in possible biomedical research-related cuts that were previously identified. Hopkins is frequently the nation’s top recipient of research funding from the National Institutes of Health.
“At this time, we have little choice but to reduce some of our work in response to the slowing and stopping of grants and to adjust to an evolving legal landscape,” Daniels wrote.
“There are difficult moments before us, with impacts to budgets, personnel, and programs. Some will take time to fully understand and address; others will happen more quickly.”
