SCIENCE: EPA cuts off funding for kids' health research centers
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tulc(Despite repeatedly expressing public support for children's health, EPA is ending funding for a network of research centers focused on environmental threats to kids, imperiling several long-running studies of pollutants' effects on child development.
The move, critics say, is part of a broader Trump administration effort to downplay science that could lead to stricter regulations on polluting industries.
At issue are 13 Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Centers located at institutions across the country, from UCLA to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
Jointly funded by EPA and the Department of Health and Human Services' National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) for more than two decades, the children's centers study everything from childhood leukemia to the development of autism spectrum disorders. Grants to those centers have long been considered unique in the public health world for including funding for both research and public outreach.
Children's health advocates have been worried about the loss of EPA support for the centers since at least 2017. That December, the agency's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee urged then-Administrator Scott Pruitt to continue financially supporting the centers.
They are "a successful and effective model of multidisciplinary, community-oriented investigations," committee Chairwoman Barbara Morrissey wrote in a letter. "The network of collaborating Children's Centers advances the field of children's environmental health more profoundly and significantly than what can be accomplished with individual studies."
Four months later, Pruitt sent a brief reply that made no mention of future funding.
"I acknowledge the strong recommendation to continue financial support of the centers," he wrote. "We will honor our existing funding commitments to the centers."
More recently, a federal lead action plan from EPA and a number of government agencies described the research centers as "important resources."
"In addition to conducting scientific studies on environmental health issues, each Children's Center collaborates with various community partners and organizations to inform, advance and disseminate information for public health protection," the plan said.
That existing funding, however, is set to run out for many of the centers at the end of the current fiscal year — leaving many programs scrambling to make up for the shortfall.
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