A professor had a $2.4m grant to study Black maternal health. Then Trump was elected

Jaime Slaughter-Acey, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had a $2.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the high rates of maternal mortality among Black women in the United States. However, the study was cancelled this spring, with the university citing that it no longer met the agency's priorities and didn't promise to increase life expectancy. Slaughter-Acey expressed shock and anger, stating that she felt like "the rug was pulled out from under us" and that the termination was "heartbreaking" and "infuriating" given the persistent disparities in maternal and infant mortality rates. The article suggests that the cancellation of the study is linked to the funding cuts instituted by the Trump administration, which threatened to undermine years of research aimed at addressing this critical public health issue.