In a small Detroit apartment, 29-year-old Jasmine Carter keeps the appointment card from her next research follow-up pinned to her fridge. She was one of nearly 600 Black women who had agreed to take part in a groundbreaking University of North Carolina (UNC) study on how racism, housing and food insecurity, and healthcare discrimination affect pregnancy and birth outcomes.
Now, she’s not sure if the researchers will ever call back.
“I thought we were finally being heard,” Carter said. “Then they just… stopped.”
Her uncertainty stems from a sudden decision earlier this year: the Trump administration froze and partially terminated the study’s funding, leaving its future in doubt.
The project, officially titled Looking Back to Look Forward: Social Environment Across the Life Course, Epigenetics, and Birth Outcomes in Black Families, was led by Dr. Jaime Slaughter-Acey, an associate professor of epidemiology at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Granted $2.4 million in 2021 by the National Institute on Aging, part of National Institutes of Health (NIH), the study sought to fill a massive knowledge gap in American maternal health knowledge. It would collect surveys, biological samples, and multi-generational histories from new mothers, their babies, and their own mothers linking lived experiences of racism and stress to biological “epigenetic” changes that may affect pregnancy outcomes.
“This wasn’t just about data,”
Dr. Slaughter-Acey said.
“It was about telling the full story of Black women’s lives and how society shapes our health.”
In early 2025, the White House and Office of Management and Budget moved to roll back more than $4.4 billion in NIH grants, targeting many tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or reproductive health.
Dr. Slaughter-Acey’s project lost $581,000 the last portion of its grant. NIH’s official reason: the study “no longer aligned with the agency’s priorities” and would not “increase life expectancy.”
The cuts hit other universities, including Columbia, UCLA, and Michigan State, and came just months after the administration proposed capping NIH indirect costs at 15%. According to Roll Call, 1,902 grants were affected between January and July 2025.
A Boston federal judge in June ordered NIH to reinstate 891 canceled projects, but logistical hurdles lost staff, dismantled labs, dissolved partnerships have made full restarts impossible for some.
CDC data show the maternal mortality rate for Black women was about 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022 nearly three times the rate for white women (26.6). The leading causes include heart disease, hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders, and infections, and most are preventable.
The disparities are fueled by what public health experts call “social determinants of health” factors like housing, income, neighborhood safety, and access to quality care. Dr. Slaughter-Acey’s study aimed to measure how these stressors get “under the skin” by altering gene activity, a field known as epigenetics.
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About 65% of Black birthing people rely on Medicaid during pregnancy, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, making them especially vulnerable to gaps in care.
“This was one of the few studies designed to explain not just what’s happening, but why,”
said Dr. Alison Stuebe, a UNC collaborator.
The funding cuts sparked swift backlash. In March, 484 NIH employees signed the “Bethesda Declaration” condemning the rollback as political interference in science.
“This is a dangerous precedent elected officials deciding what kinds of science are worth doing based on ideology, not evidence,”
said one NIH scientist who requested anonymity.
Supporters of the cuts frame them as fiscal responsibility. A White House spokesperson said in February that the administration was
“realigning funding toward research that maximizes public health impact and measurable life expectancy gains.”
Since the funding freeze, Dr. Slaughter-Acey has scrambled to keep parts of the project alive with bridge funding from Michigan State University and small public donations. But without full federal support, much of the original work including long-term follow-up with families like Jasmine Carter’s is stalled.
“You can’t pause lives,”
she said.
“Pregnancies, births, and the effects of stress keep happening whether we’re there to document them or not.”
For Carter, the uncertainty is more than an academic loss.
“If they figure out why so many Black moms like me are having complications,”
she said,
“maybe my daughter won’t face the same risks when she grows up.”
