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NIH indirect cost cuts will affect the economy and employment

Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages 1301–1302 (2025)Cite this article

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Recent US policy changes will have far-reaching consequences for the economy and employment, in addition to health and safety. Here we describe an interactive, geospatial visualization that illustrates the projected effect of funding cuts on communities nationwide.

The US government has historically invested in a health research ecosystem that has positioned the USA as a leader in preventing and treating heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, infectious disease and more1. Federal investments have paid off; for instance, over 99% of new drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019 had received funding support, in part, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)2.

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Fig. 1: Visualization of county-level economic effects of NIH cuts to funding for indirect costs.

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Acknowledgements

J.S.W. is supported, in part, by the Simons Foundation award 930382. E.B.F. and A.H.S. are supported by the Annenberg School for Communication and Annenberg Public Policy Center. A.H.S. is supported by the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media via the Joan Bossert Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. M.J.H. and J.S.W. are investigators at the University of Maryland-Institute for Health Computing, which is supported by funding from Montgomery County, Maryland and The University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State, a formal collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The authors thank J. Berg for feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Alyssa H. Sinclair

  2. Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Alyssa H. Sinclair, Danielle Cosme & Emily B. Falk

  3. Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Alyssa H. Sinclair, Danielle Cosme & Emily B. Falk

  4. Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Mallory J. Harris & Joshua S. Weitz

  5. University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing, North Bethesda, MD, USA

    Mallory J. Harris & Joshua S. Weitz

  6. School of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Clio Andris

  7. School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Clio Andris

  8. Center for Science Communication Research, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Ellen Peters

  9. Psychology Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Ellen Peters

  10. Salt Lake City VA Informatics Decision-Enhancement and Analytic Sciences (IDEAS) Center for Innovation, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Angela Fagerlin

  11. Department of Population Health Sciences, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Angela Fagerlin

  12. Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Emily B. Falk

  13. Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Emily B. Falk

Authors
  1. Alyssa H. Sinclair
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  2. Mallory J. Harris
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  8. Joshua S. Weitz
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Alyssa H. Sinclair or Joshua S. Weitz.

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Sinclair, A.H., Harris, M.J., Andris, C. et al. NIH indirect cost cuts will affect the economy and employment. Nat Hum Behav 9, 1301–1302 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02238-x

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