BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — After facing federal grant cuts left and right, health researchers in Boston are getting a helping hand from Bill Gates.
Bill Gates, Microsoft Co-founder and creator of the Gates Foundation, is leading a $2.5 billion initiative to improve women's health research, announced on August 4. Millions of those dollars are flowing to Boston-based health researchers. The past few months have been fraught for scientists in Greater Boston, as their grants were systematically frozen, withdrawn, and cut by the Trump Administration.
Dr. Ken Mayer works at Fenway Health and spoke about the $200,000 the health center received for a series of papers in The Lancet on sexual and reproductive health. He said that while the money came in before Trump took office, it flies in the face of what the administration has been doing.
“Ironically, it’s an extremely exciting time in the field of sexual and reproductive health,” said Mayer. “The idea was to bring the best information together, so to help advance the field.”
From improvements in HIV treatments to research on non-hormonal contraceptives, Mayer said that sexual and reproductive health research has come a long way, but the grant cuts have been a setback. The sub-field has especially taken a beating under the Trump Administration's cutbacks.
“We’ve had several grants cut, some of them have been reinstated,” said Mayer. “The terms by which they were cut just didn’t make a lot of sense. The work was going on, meeting the goals and the targets.”
The big worry for Mayer and many others is the future of this research and the possible dips in quality it could take if more funding is removed.
“The frustrating thing is, we have such good tools, we really could build on success,” said Mayer. “I think it's just going to be a complicated time, where they’ll be a couple steps back, a couple steps forward, and those of us involved in the work have to keep trying to move the field forward.”
While nonprofits like the Gates Foundation may not make up for all the needed funding, Mayer is thankful either way. He said every bit helps.
“We’ve done a pretty good job of maintaining what we have now, the concern is for the next 3 and a half years about what the future of this kind of research is.”
WBZ NewsRadio’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.