Between fall 2025 and summer 2026, AHRQ did not provide continuation funding for 150 awards at 78 institutions across 33 states. Together, the awards represented approximately $94 million in obligated but unspent funds.
The awards ended at different points as their individual budget periods expired. AHRQ notified recipients on July 15, 2026—often months after funding had already stopped.
This paper reconstructs what happened using federal grant records, AHRQ's notifications to recipients, and information about the affected projects.
Many of the affected awards addressed priorities AHRQ said it wanted to support.
AHRQ's letters said the agency was adjusting its research portfolio toward priorities including patient safety, preventing antibiotic resistance, telehealth, digital health tools, and artificial intelligence.
The paper compares those priorities with the subjects of the affected awards. It finds that at least 52 of the 134 affected discretionary awards directly addressed a priority named in the letters.
For example, one discontinued project was a 40-hospital trial studying how to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use—a topic directly related to preventing antibiotic resistance. At the same time, AHRQ continued funding other antibiotic stewardship research.
The analysis also examines the composition of the affected portfolio. Thirty-seven awards that did not match one of the named research priorities were training or career development awards, which support researchers rather than a particular research topic. Training health services researchers is also a statutory function of AHRQ.
The available record does not show how award-specific decisions were made.
Federal regulations governing AHRQ continuation awards call for consideration of factors including a project's progress, management, proposed work, budget, and the availability of funds.
The July 15 letters do not discuss these award-specific factors. Instead, they use a standardized explanation focused on agency priorities.
AcademyHealth did not identify documentation in the available federal grant record showing that an award-specific continuation determination was made for the affected awards.
The paper examines whether the funding decisions followed federal grant rules.
The analysis considers whether stopping funding for awards that still had time remaining in their approved project periods constitutes a termination under federal grant rules, and what procedures would apply if it does.
It also examines the 16 affected research centers funded through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund separately because their funding source and the explanation provided by AHRQ differ from the other awards.
The findings raise broader questions about how federal research priorities become funding decisions.
The paper does not take a position on which research priorities an administration should pursue. Instead, it examines how those priorities were applied to existing awards and whether the available record shows that the decisions followed the requirements governing AHRQ awards.
The findings are relevant to researchers and institutions affected by the decisions, as well as to Congress, federal agencies, appropriators, and others examining how public research funding decisions are made.