Women’s Health Initiative to receive NIH funding after all

Elizabeth Cooney is a cardiovascular disease reporter at STAT, covering heart, stroke, and metabolic conditions.

On Monday, the groundbreaking Women’s Health Initiative announced that the federal contracts funding the study’s 40 regional centers would end with the fiscal year. But on Thursday a federal official said the Department of Health and Human Services was reversing that decision, based on new National Institutes of Health budget numbers.

“These studies represent critical contributions to our better understanding of women’s health,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement to Politico, which first reported the turnaround. “While NIH initially exceeded its internal targets for contract reductions, we are now working to fully restore funding to these essential research efforts.”

The initial word that contracts for the regional centers would end in September spread across the country earlier this week after the WHI Clinical Coordinating Center at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center was notified and shared the news with regional centers, JoAnn Manson told STAT. One of the long-term principal investigators of the WHI at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she said she was cautious but hopeful while awaiting confirmation from NIH late Thursday about the reversal of the earlier budget decision.