Trump Cuts Funding For Black Infant Health Research

It would surprise absolutely no one that infant mortality rates in America are disproportionately high among Black babies, or that Black and Latino babies are more vulnerable than their white counterparts to serious, life-threatening illnesses such as upper respiratory infection (URI).

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to our current political climate would be equally unsurprised to find that, under the Trump administration, medical research that seeks to understand why Black children suffer these health issues so often is under attack, because the results of that research might hurt white people’s feelings. In other words, Black babies might have to die in order to placate white fragility.

According to The Cincinnati Herald, a federally funded study exploring why Black babies in Detroit are disproportionately born prematurely has been abruptly terminated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), apparently, because the study focused on the effects of stress associated with racism and poverty, and how that stress might alter gene function and contribute to adverse birth outcomes — or as the Trump administration defines it, DEI.

From the Herald:

In termination letters sent to researchers, the NIH claimed the project relied on “artificial and non-scientific categories” linked to DEI and asserted it did not “enhance health or advance science.”

Researchers behind the project strongly contest that explanation, calling the decision politically motivated. The cancellation aligns with a broader initiative by the Trump administration to dismantle DEI initiatives across the federal government, including within health and science agencies. Numerous projects focused on minority and LGBTQ health have been defunded under the same rationale.

So, a bunch of so-called medical authorities from the same administration that gave the position of a Secretary of Health and Human Services to RFK Jr. — who thinks Black people don’t need vaccines as much as white people because we have super negro immune systems —  have canceled funding for this research, because, in their non-medical opinions, any research tied to racial disparities is “non-scientific.” Actual medical experts, of course, say differently.

“Health-related social needs are health care,” said Dr. Alex Peahl, an OB-GYN at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Partnering for the Future Clinic. “And if we want to improve the health of pregnant people and their families, we have to care for every part of their lives, not just the clinical pieces.”

Peahl noted that access to prenatal care is inseparable from issues like lack of transportation, food insecurity and other external stressors that disproportionately affect Black people.

“It is really hard to come to your prenatal visit if you don’t have a car, or to take a medication if you don’t have food on the table,” she explained.

And it would be nice if the administration of President Donald Trump cared about any of that, but it does not.

In April, Trump signed an executive order that essentially made housing discrimination easier by requiring federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to stop using “disparate impact” data to identify discriminatory policies and practices that disproportionately harm certain groups. Days before signing that order, Trump signed a similar order discouraging school administrators from using “disparate impact” data to address racial disparities in disciplinary actions taken against students. In other words: Trump decided researchers can’t use data involving racial disparities to study potential racial discrimination because, in his mind and that of his ilk, anything that addresses systemic racism against anyone but white people is a diversity, equity and inclusion effort. 

Hell, also in April, the Trump administration ended a wastewater settlement for a mostly Black Alabama town, erroneously calling it “environmental justice as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens” because the case addressed environmental racism. So, a whole town full of Black people has to continue living with well-documented wastewater sanitation issues all because a White House full of white nationalists is far more invested in silencing calls for racial justice than it is in correcting racial injustice (again, except for fictional racial injustice against white people).

Anyway, according to the Herald, the research team in Detroit, which is currently scrambling to secure private funding so it can continue its work, has 30 days to appeal the NIH decision. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the agency’s funding cuts to minority health research were illegal and an example of “government racial discrimination” like nothing the judge had ever seen. Unfortunately, that ruling could also be appealed by the Trump administration.

The very idea of correcting systemic racism in America makes white conservatives deeply resentful, and Black health continues to suffer because of it.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

Op-Ed: We Should All Be More Concerned That Trump Keeps Threatening To Deport US Citizens

Trump’s DOJ Investigates University Of California Over Effort To Recruit Racially Diverse Faculty