‘A devastating blow’: Trump guts funding for U.S.’s largest health study of women

This is an adapted excerpt from the April 23 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”

UPDATE (April 25, 2025, 8:36 a.m. ET: The Department of Health and Human Services is reversing its decision to gut funding for the Women’s Health Initiative, an HHS spokesperson told Politico.

As Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to gut all kinds of key federal programs, we are once again asking: Who voted for this? This week’s example: the Women’s Health Initiative.

The National Institutes of Health began the initiative back in 1991. The project started under the leadership of Bernadine Healy, a practicing cardiologist and legendary figure in public health. She was appointed by then-President George H.W. Bush to be the first woman to run the NIH. Healy called the initiative — the largest women’s health prevention study in the U.S. — a “moon walk” for women.

The purpose of the long-term project was to research cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, a group that had been historically neglected by disease prevention researchers.

Healy called the initiative —the largest women’s health prevention study in the U.S. — a “moon walk” for women.

The initiative is possibly best known for its study of the potential risks of estrogen-plus-progestin hormone therapy to treat the symptoms of menopause. The Women’s Health Initiative estimates that research prevented 126,000 cases of breast cancer and 76,000 cases of heart disease over the following decade. Which, in turn, saved more than $35 billion in direct medical costs. 

The initiative produces important research to this day. For example, just last May, it released a study finding that calcium-plus-vitamin D supplements do not prevent bone fractures in menopausal women.

But this week, the Women’s Health Initiative announced that the Trump administration is cutting its funding. Its regional research centers will close in September. The main research center’s future also remains uncertain after January of next year. The funding, in totality, amounts to a mere $10 million annually. (And $10 million is less than half of what U.S. taxpayers have reportedly spent for Trump’s golf trips in these first three months of his term.)

JoAnn Manson, a doctor with Harvard Medical School, told Science that the cuts are a “devastating blow to the health of all older adults in the U.S. and throughout the world.” She added, “No study is a better example of the enormous scientific impact of research on the prevention of chronic disease in the population.” Chronic disease prevention — that is the point of this research. It’s not a partisan issue.

So, the question still stands: Who voted for this? Because I sure don’t remember Trump’s campaign promise to cut breast cancer research and to make menopause harder for American women.