Staff cuts are undermining federal research on how to make healthcare better

STAT News – Wednesday, August 13, 2025
By Chelsea Cirruzzo

WASHINGTON — A small federal agency that studies how to improve the health care system has been rendered functionally “incapacitated” after much of its staff was laid off or retired, according to three people, including two former employees, who spoke with STAT.

The loss of most of the workers at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has left it unable to distribute grants or support a panel of outside experts that advises on preventive medical services, the people said.

“None of the other science agencies in HHS — NIH, FDA, nor CDC — focus on actually improving the quality of care that Americans can receive,” Robert Otto Valdez, who directed the agency through January, told STAT via email. “That has been AHRQ’s scientific focus.”

STAT spoke with two former employees who asked not to be named to avoid reprisal and Aaron Carroll, president and CEO of AcademyHealth, a nonpartisan group that advocates for health researchers. They said that while the directors of many AHRQ offices remain because it is difficult to fire them, their staffs have been decimated.

According to an AcademyHealth analysis of a publicly available federal grants database, AHRQ has not approved any new grants since April 1, compared with nearly $6 million in new awards during the same period last year. The group also found that just $23 million in continuing grants have been awarded this year since April 1, versus more than $50 million in the same period of 2024.

In April, AHRQ was affected by the initial round of layoffs that were implemented in a massive restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services. At the time, half of the agency was estimated to have been laid off, STAT previously reported.

However, the three people who spoke with STAT say close to 90% of workers are now gone, including people who took early retirement offers.

Among the offices impacted are the agency’s budget office, the office that distributes research grants, its congressional liaison, and the Division of Practice Improvement, which disseminates research to health care systems and advises them on how to use evidence-based practices.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the agency will be combined with the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in a newly created Office of Strategy “to conduct research that informs the Secretary’s policies and evaluates the effectiveness of the Department’s programs for a healthier America.” She did not say how many people remain at AHRQ, in response to questions from STAT.

However, the Senate’s 2026 plan for HHS doesn’t include that restructuring, and instead continues to fund AHRQ with a slight cut. In July, HHS quietly installed molecular pathologist and former biotech executive Roger D. Klein as the agency’s director, adding him to the agency’s webpage but not issuing a formal announcement.

Carroll said the staffing cuts that prevent AHRQ from getting grants out the door could violate a law preventing presidents from withholding funds Congress has approved, known as impoundment.

In July, recipients of a grant for training new researchers were told via email that, as a result of staff reductions impacting AHRQ’s grant management staff, the agency is “currently unable to process grant awards,” as STAT previously reported.

Among the programs not being funded is a proposed Healthcare Extension Service program that would have funded programs across 15 states to better integrate behavioral health and expand rural health care access, per Carroll. According to AcademyHealth, the program would’ve supported more than 100 primary care practices, mostly in rural areas, in Washington state, for example.

“That’s the kind of thing that had bipartisan support,” Carroll said. “That’s gone. It’s just gone.”

In early August, the Government Accountability Office called out the Trump administration for violating the law in abruptly canceling National Institutes of Health grants. GAO hasn’t made any public determination on the grants that aren’t being funded at AHRQ.

AHRQ employees are also responsible for supporting the work of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a panel of volunteer experts who offer recommendations on which preventive services, like cancer screenings and HIV prevention, insurers should cover. The loss of staff comes as health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mulls dismissing the entirety of the panel and replacing it with members who more closely align with his agenda.

Carroll noted that Kennedy is a longtime critic of the bureaucracy in the health care system, and asked why he would so deeply cut an agency that studies how to improve the system’s quality.

“Fixing chronic disease, trying to find out its root cause — these are the things [Make America Healthy Again] says it cares about,” Carroll said. “These are the things AHRQ studies. But there’s zero funding going out the door.”

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