Health
N.I.H. Bans New Funding From U.S. Scientists to Partners Abroad
The National Institutes of Health will no longer allow American scientists to direct its funding to research partners overseas, casting doubt on the future of studies on subjects including malaria and childhood cancer.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the N.I.H., announced the policy on Thursday, the same day Dr. Matthew J. Memoli, the principal deputy director, blasted these so-called subawards in an email obtained by The New York Times.
“If you can’t clearly justify why you are doing something overseas, as in it can’t possibly be done anywhere else and it benefits the American people,” Dr. Memoli wrote, “then the project should be closed down.”
The new restrictions, which will apply to domestic subawards as well in the future, come amid deep reductions in N.I.H. funding and the freezing of federal grants at many top universities, along with executive orders seeking to reshape the nation’s scientific agenda.
On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order restricting a type of experimentation that can make pathogens more dangerous to humans, and ending support for the so-called gain-of-function research in countries like China.
Researchers funded by N.I.H. grants have historically used subawards to facilitate international collaborations, which are essential for studying conditions like childhood cancer or illnesses like malaria and tuberculosis that are not prevalent in the United States.
The subawards are legal and financial agreements made between the grant recipients and their overseas partners. The practice is used throughout the federal government and is not unique to the N.I.H.
But it has come under fire in recent years because of lax reporting and tracking of funds. After a critical report by the Government Accountability Office in 2023, the N.I.H. put stricter monitoring requirements in place.
Advocates for scientific and medical research said that as science has become more complex, collaborative initiatives that draw participants and scientists from around the world have become more critical.
“Competitive science requires a team approach,” said Dr. E. Anders Kolb, chief executive of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. “There’s no one lab or institution or investigator that has all of the tools necessary to solve the very complex questions that we’re asking.”
Many of these studies require a large number of subjects. For example, as scientists are able to define types of childhood cancers more precisely, Dr. Kolb said, “you get into increasingly smaller and smaller subsets of disease.”
“So if you want to run a clinical trial of a new therapy that may benefit those children, it could take decades to complete a trial if you only enroll children in the U.S.,” he added. “When we collaborate with our international partners, we can finish these trials much more quickly and get the therapies to children as soon as possible.”
In announcing the new directive, Dr. Bhattacharya cited recent Government Accountability Office reports that have been critical of funding given to international universities and laboratories, as well as businesses.
The issues highlighted by the G.A.O. reports “can lead to a breakdown in trust and potentially the security of the U.S. biomedical research enterprise,” Dr. Bhattacharya added.
N.I.H. spending on these international groups is difficult to track, one of the faults noted by the G.A.O. The journal Nature, which first reported the new policy, estimated the total at approximately $500 million a year.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has N.I.H. funding to study H.I.V. prevention and treatment in Kenya and South Africa, work that will be affected by the new policy.
Researchers like her must provide detailed information about international subawards when they apply for their grants, she said, including justifications for using a foreign entity and for each aspect of the budget.
International partners must now provide access to their lab notebooks, data and other documentation at least once a year, Dr. Gandhi noted. All of the expenditures are tracked on a system called the Foreign Award and Component Tracking System, or FACTS, she said.
“It’s very rigorous, as it should be when you’re using taxpayer dollars,” Dr. Gandhi said.
“Every year when you put in your progress report, you account for every penny that was spent at the foreign site — where it went, how much to lab tests, how much was paid investigators, every aspect.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how the new policy would be implemented. The N.I.H. did not respond to requests for additional information.
The N.I.H. will not retroactively halt foreign subawards already in place “at this time” and will continue to make awards directly to international groups, the agency’s statement said.
But the new policy will forbid new competing awards and noncompeting awards to be reissued if they propose subawards to foreign institutions.
“If a project is no longer viable without the foreign subawards, N.I.H. will work with the recipient to negotiate a bilateral termination of the project,” the statement said.
The new policy appeared to be somewhat less draconian than the summation put forth by Dr. Memoli in his internal email, which threatened immediate action to shut down or pause international sites.
“Subawards to foreign sites can’t continue,” he wrote. “This has been horribly mismanaged for years and it has been completely irresponsible. We must take immediate action. If a study has a foreign site we need to start closing it down or finding a different way to fund it that can be tracked properly.”
G.A.O. reports that had criticized various federal departments for lax reporting had called for improving oversight. But the office did not recommend terminating such funding altogether.
In 2023, a G.A.O. report reviewed $2 million in direct awards and subawards, most of it from the N.I.H., given to three Chinese research institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, between 2014 and 2021.
The virology institute received subawards from the University of California, Irvine, and from the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance. The alliance’s work with Chinese scientists led former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to suspend its funding last year. The Trump administration recently changed the government portal for Covid information with a website suggesting that the new virus originated in a lab in Wuhan.
The G.A.O. report said that N.I.H. oversight didn’t always ensure that the foreign institutions complied with terms and conditions, including biosafety requirements.
One reason expenditures were hard to track was because of a federal government policy that required reporting subawards only of $30,000 or more, another G.A.O. report said.
That report examined some $48 million in N.I.H. and State Department funding that went to Chinese businesses and research institutions between 2017 and 2021, including one project to study diseases that are transmitted by insects, like malaria.
It found that “the full extent of these subawards is unknown,” and that data was incomplete and sometimes inaccurate, because so many expenditures were exempt from reporting.
Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting.
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A new review suggests that the type of fat you eat may affect your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Saturated fats rich in palmitic acid – the most common saturated fatty acid in U.S. foods – appear to make it harder for the body to respond to insulin.
Meanwhile, monounsaturated fats rich in oleic acid — such as those found in olive oil — may help protect against insulin resistance, the review concluded.
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“Palmitic acid is found in meats, dairy products, cocoa butter and in the form of palm oil in foods, including margarine, cereal, sweets, baked goods and fast foods,” Tanya Freirich, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Charlotte, North Carolina, told Fox News Digital. She was not involved in the review.
“Oleic acid, on the other hand, is in higher concentration in foods like olive oil, canola oil, nuts, sunflower seeds, eggs, olive, avocados and also in meats (beef, chicken, pork), milk, cheese and pasta.”
Saturated fats rich in palmitic acid – the most common saturated fatty acid in U.S. foods – appear to make it harder for the body to respond to insulin. (iStock)
The review, which was published in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, was led by researchers from the University of Barcelona and the CIBER Area for Diabetes and Associated Metabolic Diseases (CIBERDEM) in Spain.
The findings suggest that fat quality may be more important than total fat quantity when it comes to metabolic health and diabetes risk.
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This appears to support the idea that diets rich in monounsaturated fats, such as the Mediterranean diet, may contribute to lower rates of type 2 diabetes.
“Palmitic acid promotes several molecular processes that impair insulin action,” study investigator Dr. Manuel Vázquez-Carrera, from the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, told Fox News Digital.
“Palmitic acid is found in meats, dairy products, cocoa butter and in the form of palm oil in foods, including margarine, cereal, sweets, baked goods and fast foods,” a nutritionist said. (iStock)
Too much palmitic acid can cause harmful fat byproducts to build up in the body, which can impair the body’s ability to respond to insulin, he warned. This makes it harder to control blood sugar and increases the risk of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
“It also promotes inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and cellular stress responses, which contribute to insulin resistance and β-cell dysfunction,” Vázquez-Carrera added.
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By contrast, oleic acid – a hallmark of the Mediterranean diet – does not have these harmful effects, according to the researcher.
“In fact, oleic acid can counteract many of the detrimental effects triggered by palmitic acid, by promoting the storage of fatty acids in relatively inert triglycerides, preserving mitochondrial function and reducing inflammation,” he said.
“All sources of fat in our diet contain a mix of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids.”
Freirich confirmed that the review is consistent with previous research supporting the use of olive oil in the diet for metabolic benefits.
“Also confirming previous research, the consumption of saturated fats is associated with some negative metabolic changes,” she told Fox News Digital.
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Given the complexity of foods and diets, there is an overlap between foods that contain both types of fatty acids, the nutritionist noted.
“Palmitic acid and oleic acid can both be found in olive oil, baked goods and fast foods, in differing amounts,” she said. “All sources of fat in our diet contain a mix of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids.”
Study limitations
Vázquez-Carrera noted that these findings come from a review of numerous experimental, clinical and epidemiological studies rather than a single clinical trial.
“One important limitation is that much of the mechanistic evidence comes from cell culture and animal studies,” he said.
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“Although these studies provide valuable insights into how specific fatty acids affect insulin signaling, further human intervention studies are needed to confirm the extent to which these mechanisms operate in everyday dietary settings.”
In addition, many of the human studies in the review relied on self-reported dietary intake, which can introduce inaccuracies.
Type 2 diabetes develops over many years, with genetics, lifestyle and environmental factors all playing a role, the researcher noted. (iStock)
“Another challenge is that people consume foods containing complex mixtures of fatty acids and bioactive compounds rather than isolated fatty acids,” Vázquez-Carrera added. “Therefore, it remains difficult to fully disentangle the specific contribution of individual fatty acids in free-living populations.”
Nutritional recommendations
The review’s findings appear to support current dietary recommendations that emphasize replacing part of the saturated fat intake with unsaturated fats, according to Vázquez-Carrera.
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“This means favoring dietary patterns rich in foods such as extra-virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, legumes, vegetables, fruits and fish, while limiting excessive consumption of foods rich in saturated fats, especially highly processed foods,” he advised.
The review does not suggest that a single nutrient alone determines diabetes risk, the researcher pointed out.
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“Rather, maintaining a healthy body weight, engaging in regular physical activity and following an overall healthy dietary pattern, such as the Mediterranean diet, remain fundamental strategies for preventing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.”
Type 2 diabetes develops over many years, with genetics, lifestyle and environmental factors all playing a role, Vázquez-Carrera noted.
Improving the quality of dietary fat intake could prove to be an effective strategy for reducing type 2 diabetes risk, the review suggests. (iStock)
“Future research should move beyond simply classifying fats as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and instead focus on understanding how specific fatty acids, their dietary sources and their interactions within whole dietary patterns affect metabolic health,” he said.
Improving the quality of dietary fat intake could prove to be an effective strategy for reducing type 2 diabetes risk, according to the researcher.
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“A simple takeaway for consumers is to swap out foods high in saturated fat more often with foods rich in heart-healthy fats, like olive oil, nuts and avocados, to better support blood sugar and metabolic health,” advised New Jersey-based registered dietitian Erin Palinski-Wade, who was also not involved in the review.
Anyone at a higher risk for type 2 diabetes should consult a healthcare provider for personalized guidance on nutrition, exercise and other preventive measures, experts say.
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By Apoorva Mandavilli, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Nikolay Nikolov, Stephanie Swart, Rafaela Balster and Lauren Pruitt
June 23, 2026
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Just four minutes of daily strength exercises can dramatically improve mobility, balance and leg strength in older adults, per new research from the Penn State College of Medicine.
Standard public health guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. However, the study suggests that fewer than one in five older adults meet the recommended muscle-strengthening guidelines.
The research team designed a home-based program called Functional Activity Strength Training, or FAST-2. They evaluated 97 sedentary participants 65 and older, with an average age of 74.
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Before entering the study, these individuals were averaging just 18 minutes of total physical activity each week.
The older adults were randomly split into two groups, with one group performing the daily exercise routine and the other serving as a control group that received no intervention, according to the study’s press release.
Just four minutes of daily home strength training can significantly improve mobility, balance and leg strength in older adults, according to a Penn State College of Medicine study. (iStock)
Participants performed four basic movements for 30 seconds each, separated by 30-second rest intervals. The entire routine lasted exactly four minutes. The circuit consisted of push-ups, chair stands, two-arm resistance-band rows and stair stepping.
To keep the routine accessible, researchers provided written explanations and simple modifications. For example, participants could perform push-ups against a kitchen counter or wall, or use their hands on their knees for support during chair stands.
Participants were also given four elastic resistance bands and an adjustable step platform.
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“Exercise is actually really complicated, because you have to decide how many repetitions, how far, how many sets, how much rest and how many times per week,” co-author Smita Dandekar, associate professor of pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine, said in the press release.
“It’s hard work … so if we can make it short, we’re part [of the] way there.”
The program consisted of four basic movements: push-ups, chair stands, resistance-band rows and stair stepping. (iStock)
As the participants grew stronger, they were encouraged to progress to higher levels of difficulty, such as transitioning away from modifications or increasing the height of the stepper.
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After 12 weeks, the results suggested that a tiny dose of regular exercise could yield noticeable physical benefits. In a 30-second chair-stand test, the exercise group performed an average of 4.2 more repetitions than the control group.
“These indicators … give you a sense of whether or not you’re going to be able to be active in the future.”
The adults doing the exercises also shaved 2.3 seconds off their time during a test measuring how they could stand up and sit down five times consecutively. Furthermore, they extended their one-legged balance time by an average of 3.6 seconds.
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The researchers emphasized that these specific measurements are critical medical indicators of an older adult’s future health.
By keeping the routine ultra-short, researchers eliminated common barriers like time constraints and exhaustion, resulting in an exceptionally high 81% workout completion rate. (iStock)
“These indicators predict your future ability to go into a nursing home, your future likelihood of falling and of developing difficulty walking,” noted lead author Christopher Sciamanna, professor of medicine and of public health at Penn State College of Medicine, in the press release.
“They give you a sense of whether or not you’re going to be able to be active in the future.”
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While traditional home exercise programs generally see low engagement, the participants in this study successfully completed their workouts on 81% of the tracked days, according to the researchers.
After 12 weeks, exercising seniors gained the ability to complete an average of four more chair-stand repetitions than those who did not exercise. (iStock)
The study had several noted limitations. As it tracked a relatively small sample size of fewer than 100 individuals over a brief 12-week time frame, it is unknown whether these mobility gains can be sustained long-term.
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Additionally, the researchers did not specify the exact dropout rates or detail how the routine might affect seniors who already relied on assistive devices like walkers or canes.
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Because the final trial results reflected a specific group of participants who met the entry criteria, further investigation is required to determine whether the short routine can safely benefit older adults facing more severe physical limitations or cognitive decline.
The study was published in the journal PLOS One.
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