A candid conversation between a professor and a Ph.D. candidate about potential funding cuts from the National Institutes of Health and their impact on the future of medical research.
This week’s episode is different from our usual Tradeoffs stories.
We spent the last few weeks talking with researchers about the Trump administration’s efforts to delay, cut and redirect scientific funding from the National Institutes of Health. Again and again, experienced scientists brought up conversations they’re having with the young people they mentor who keep asking, “Should I stay in academia? Is there a future here?”
So we decided to bring you one of these conversations.
Yvonne Commodore-Mensah is an associate dean of research at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and Laura Mata López is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate. Both women are immigrants, both study health disparities, and both are concerned they could lose their NIH funding as part of the administration’s anti-DEI efforts. Laura was hoping to get NIH funding for a clinical trial to test what she says would be the first suicide prevention intervention for Latina immigrants. Now, she fears that work could be over before it really begins.
“We can’t just pretend that in four years, we’re going to get another chance,” Laura told Yvonne. “I still do see a viable path as a nurse-scientist, but not in academia.”
That possibility scares Yvonne. She worries about the advances in health care that will be lost if the Trump administration pushes talented young scientists like Laura out of academic research.
“I acknowledge that it’s a challenging period,” Yvonne told Laura. “But we have to be hopeful. I feel like we don’t have an option. The opposite of that would be just despair. And I know that our communities are counting on us to still want to fight.”
Listen to the full episode above or read the transcript below to hear Laura share her pain at feeling like her work is under attack, and Yvonne shares why, in the face of all the uncertainty, she remains hopeful – and the advice she hopes Laura will take to heart.
Episode Transcript and Resources
Dan Gorenstein (DG): Researchers are feeling anxious. For decades they’ve reliably turned to the National Institutes of Health to fund cutting-edge work on cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and mental illness. But a few weeks into the Trump administration, funding from the $48 billion agency is much less certain.
Reviews of more than $1 billion in new research grants have been delayed. The NIH has cut off other grants that study vaccine hesitancy and LGBTQ health. The only thing that’s stopped the president from eliminating another $4 billion in funding is a temporary court order.
Laura Mata López (LML): This is not supposed to happen. This is not supposed to happen. This is not supposed to happen.
DG: Seasoned researchers worry about the fallout all this will have on clinical trials — the work that can provide new treatments and cures to deadly diseases. And they fear this disruption will chase away the next generation of brilliant scientists.
Yvonne Commodore-Mensah (YCM): There’s so much that we lose when we disinvest in people who are making a meaningful contribution.
DG: Today, a candid conversation between two researchers about the uncertain present, and its impact on the future of health care.
From the studios at the Leonard Davis Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, I’m Dan Gorenstein. This is Tradeoffs.
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DG: We’ve spent the last few weeks talking with academics about the impacts that deep cuts to NIH funding may have. Again and again, they bring up the conversations they’re having with the young people they mentor who keep asking questions like, “Should I stay in academia?”
To get at the concern for the future generation of researchers, we decided to do something a little different for today’s show.
Two researchers — one a professor and the other a graduate student — have agreed to let us listen in on their conversation, the kind that is happening on campuses across the country.
YCM: I’m Yvonne Commodore-Mensah. I’m a professor at Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing and Public Health.
LML: my name is Laura Mata López, and I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner by trade, public health nurse. I am a fourth year PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
DG: The two met when Laura took one of Yvonne’s classes, and they have a lot in common. They’re both immigrants. Yvonne came from Ghana at 19 to go to school. Laura immigrated from Costa Rica when she was 12.
They both became nurses, and they were both drawn to research because they saw few studies about how to treat people who looked like them.
Here’s a quick primer on their current research: Yvonne leads an NIH-funded clinical trial in Baltimore looking at whether community health workers and pharmacists can help people keep their blood pressure under control and avoid heart attack, stroke and kidney disease. The NIH currently funds Laura to examine what drives suicide among Latina immigrants — one of the first studies of its kind.
The conversation between these two begins with the grad student Laura explaining how it felt to get her first NIH grant back in 2023.
LML: I remember that summer was the first summer that I was able to take my mom on a trip internationally, the first time we ever traveled together. We were going to Madrid on a train. And I was working that whole summer on that grant, and I stood on that train track and I looked at my mom and I was like, “Mom, I’m going to submit this grant and I’m going to get funded on the first time. I’m going to do it and I’m going to do it for us.”
I mean, you know working on these grants, it’s essentially a 6 to 8 month process where I didn’t see the light of day. I didn’t leave my house, didn’t call my friends or family as much. We give a lot to these proposals.
And so, yeah, there was both a sense of humbling validation that our work is deserving at this level scientifically. But also that maybe the tide is changing. Maybe things are shifting. Maybe funders are ready for this work.
I want to be clear in that the community doesn’t need science to recognize that suicide or trauma are a problem. The community knows that they’re a problem. But scientific recognition of it and prioritizing it as a problem is essential to the solutions that we bring to these communities. And that brings us to now.
YCM: Yes. So you think you have the opportunity to do the work and have the impact that you would like. But we learned unfortunately, at the end of January, that President Trump attempted to cut funding for specific grants that support diversity, equity and inclusion.
For me I was concerned about the impact on experienced researchers who are actively doing work that saves lives, right. But more importantly, the devastating impact on what we call fellowship grants. Grants that are intended to train the next generation of scientists like you.
So talk to me about how all that makes you feel.
LML: It’s been really devastating and definitely stress inducing. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and for me, there is the immediate worry of my funding being abruptly cut off in the next months or weeks. But also these are grants that usually get renewed every year. And while that’s traditionally a formality, with everything that’s now happening, the major fear is that my grant will not be renewed for the final year.
Above that, though, there’s a greater sense, I think, for me, of like, injustice. In the days in the aftermath of all of this happening, I just kept saying like, this is not supposed to happen. This is not supposed to happen. This is not supposed to happen, Yvonne. You get an award, you get a grant, and you do the work.
YCM: Yes
LML: So for me, it’s been this sobering reality of, we’ve been trained to believe that that is the solution to health equity. But if the powers that be can come and take it all from you and just pull it out from under you, then it’s an illusion of equity and it’s not real.
YCM: So this feels very much like a, I’m going to borrow a term we use a lot in statistics, a regression, right? My research right now is funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. There is currently no issue in terms of pulling funding, but the institute may be targeted because of the nature of the research that’s funded.
And so with this funded trial, we’ve been successful in recruiting 275 participants so far. And we have about 100 to go. If there’s any disruption in the funding, it doesn’t allow us to fully answer our research question, which means that we would have invested almost $2 million and not had an opportunity to be able to determine whether this program is effective or not.
So Laura, what do you think is the cost of your research not happening? What does it cost society if you are not able to complete the work you’ve started?
LML: If I lose this funding, if our team loses this funding, we won’t be able to finish what is the first rigorous study exploring what is driving suicide and also what protects from suicide, specifically among Latina immigrants. Suicide is still a leading cause of death in our community. But without this data, our ability to develop evidence based suicide prevention tools, interventions and solutions is limited. And bottom line, it will be more difficult to save people’s lives.
DG: When we come back, Laura reflects on her future as a researcher and turns to Yvonne for guidance and hope.
Midroll
DG: Welcome back.
Researchers nationwide say the Trump administration has already terminated some NIH grants as part of its anti-DEI efforts. Universities have sued the federal government, and courts have temporarily blocked efforts to cut billions of dollars in research funding.
Today, we’re listening in on a conversation about how those cuts could hurt the next generation of scientists. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, the associate dean for research at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is talking to Laura Mata López, a nurse practitioner and 4th year PhD student at Johns Hopkins.
Yvonne and Laura’s NIH-funded research has not been affected yet, but they’re worried cuts could come any day. And they both suspect health equity research overall will become much harder to do going forward. Laura is scared that it could become basically impossible.
LML: For the community that I work with, who are largely undocumented Latina immigrants, there’s I think always a perceived risk in not just providing their data but also talking about suicide. A lot of the women that we interviewed told us that they’ve never disclosed this prior to this study.
There’s this quote that I keep replaying in my head, and this woman just said in Spanish, “I just keep hearing that if you ask for help, they’ll take your kids away. And if they do that, then they will really kill me then.” “Si me lo hacen, ahí sí me iban a matar.”
It takes a lot of work and trust to build the engagement that we’ve built this far. And if our funding is impacted before we can bring a real set of solutions to the community, the solutions that we promised or the answers that we promised, I have very little expectations that they will show up for my work or for academic research in the future.
Are there lessons that you can give to us, to trainees to give us hope? Is there hope that you have?
YCM: I think one of the differences for me and a lot of people who are in the health equity spaces is this is not just a project, right? Our identities and our whole being is really rooted in giving everyone an opportunity to live a full life. And so this isn’t something that you walk away from, even when it feels like health equity research is not popular. I will say most of us are stubborn.
LML Very.
YCM: Very stubborn.
LML: It takes a very stubborn person to get to this point.
YCM: Yeah. It takes this tenacity to want to do this work because there’s so many gaps in knowledge. There are a lot of communities that have been forgotten. There are communities that are dying needlessly. And there are lives to be saved. And we understand that that’s our life’s purpose.
So what gives me hope is that this is not the first time we’ve had challenges with research. I know this feels different. But I know that we have roots that are deep in communities, and we will find ways to work with communities to come up with solutions. We learned that during the Covid 19 pandemic where people came up with creative ways to reach communities that were hesitant to get vaccinated.
There are foundations, there are individuals who care about this type of work. And more of them will have to step in in this season to say, here’s the gap. We’re going to step up. We’re going to step in because we believe in investing in the next generation of scientists.
So it’s devastating. But we have to be hopeful. I feel like we don’t have an option. The opposite of that would be just despair. And I know that our communities are counting on us to still want to fight.
LML: What responsibility does Johns Hopkins and the universities that we exist within have to us, especially during times of crisis like this, where federal funding is out of our control, right? Like we applied, we received, we were awarded. What responsibility do these institutions have to keep us here when the message that’s being sent is, you don’t belong here?
YCM: I acknowledge that it’s a challenging period. And institutions, when you admit a student, the way I see things is you’re committed to supporting them from the time you’re admitted to the time they graduate. And so, in the face of this crisis, I believe that institutions have a responsibility to find ways to support students that are affected.
Another reason I’m hopeful is that institutions are working together, and we know that when we are in a state of a crisis, right, there’s power in numbers. There are institutions that are banding together to try to fight against a lot of these cuts because of the devastating impacts.
LML: Yeah, that’s one of the things that would give me hope in this time is like, if institutions really showed their way in being able to say, stay, there’s a reason for you to stay. And when things get hard, we’ll support you.
As of currently, I still do see a viable path as a nurse-scientist, but not in academia. So it’s just a matter of where. Where can my work be? Where can my community be? Where can they exist in a way that makes them feel safe, in a way that makes our research sustainable and meaningful without added harm and without added vulnerability?
YCM: Well, I’m glad that you’re still considering a path in terms of being a nurse-scientist, but it sounds like you’re not considering academia as an option now?
LML: I would be lying if I said I didn’t come to Hopkins with this idea of one day becoming a professor, right? Becoming one of those mentors that shaped my career, so that maybe things don’t have to be so hard for the next group of students like myself who come through.
So to me, it’s not a no, it’s not a hard no. I’m really looking for institutions to show up right now. I really, when I start to do interviews in a year and a half, I want to know from deans and from people who are interested in me coming to work for them, how they responded to funding cuts, particularly impacting their faculty of color.
YCM: And you know what, Laura? I’m just reflecting back to the point in the course when you presented your career trajectory. You remember that was one of the assignments in the course?
I remember thinking, my goodness, I know that a lot of Latina nursing students are going to be exposed to you, and they’re going to see themselves in you and are going to want to pursue a career in academia or just do such important work because you were just so passionate and it was clear that, you know, this is this is your life’s work.
And that’s what I worry about if you were to decide not to be in academia. You will always do amazing work. But I worry that they won’t have Laura to look up to. They won’t have a role model.
And just this past weekend, I had people tell me, you know, you’re the reason I got a PhD. And that was so humbling. And so that’s the vision I always had for you, because there aren’t a lot of people like you. You’re a rare breed.
And so that’s what I worry about the most, that we will lose people like you who bring such richness, authenticity, creativity to the work that you do. But I have hope. I know I’m accused of being an optimist because I feel like that’s what we need.
We cannot lose hope. We cannot despair because there are a lot of people who fought even for the right to study in institutions like this. And so we’re here to stay. And I’m hopeful that the right people will do the right things to make sure that this important work continues.
LML: Thanks, Yvonne.
YCM: You got this, sweetie. You got this.
LML: We’ve got this.
YCM: Yeah.
LML: Yeah, we’ve got this.
DG: That was Yvonne Commodore-Mensah speaking with Laura Mata López, both nurse-scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
I’m Dan Gorenstein, this is Tradeoffs. Episode Resources
Additional Reporting on NIH funding cuts:
NIH to ax grants on vaccine hesitancy, mRNA vaccines (Sara Reardon, Science, 3/10/2025)
Trump honored a cancer survivor. The boy’s doctors now face his budget cuts. (Zachary Schermele, USA Today, 3/8/2025)
NIH abruptly terminates millions in research grants, defying court orders (Kay Lazar and Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, 3/7/2025)
US judge bars Trump administration from cutting NIH research funding (Nate Raymond, Reuters, 3/5/2025)
NIH reels with fear, uncertainty about future of scientific research (Carolyn Y. Johnson and Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 3/5/2025)
NIH Indirect Costs Policy for Research Grants: Recent Developments (Kavya Sekar and Marcy E. Gallo, Congressional Research Service, 3/3/2025)
NIH funding freeze stalls applications on $1.5 billion in medical research funds (Rob Stein, NPR, 2/22/2025)
NIH scraps program to diversify the biomedical workforce, a longtime goal of science (Usha Lee McFarling and Anil Oza, STAT News, 2/27/2025)
How Trump’s Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State (Emily Badger, Aatish Bhatia, Irineo Cabreros, Eli Murray, Francesca Paris, Margot Sanger-Katz and Ethan Singer; New York Times, 2/13/2025)
Taking a Whack at Indirect Costs (Gabrielle Kalisz and Ryan Long, Paragon Health Institute, 2/11/2025)
Researchers reel as Trump administration moves quickly to cut funding and end DEI health programs (Angus Chen, Usha Lee McFarling and Jonathan Wosen; STAT News, 1/27/2025) Episode Credits
Guests:
The Tradeoffs theme song was composed by Ty Citerman. Additional music this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.
Additional thanks to Rachel Bender Ignacio, Jeremy Berg, Otis Brawley, Aaron Carroll, Dan Cooper, Elena Fuentes-Afflick, Robert Kelchen, Daniel Martinez, Raphe Reggie, Sarah Spreitzer and Sarah Szanton.
This episode was produced by Ryan Levi, edited by Dan Gorenstein and mixed by Andrew Parrella and Cedric Wilson.
Reporting for this episode was supported in part by Arnold Ventures.
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