Maternie

The landmark Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) announced that HHS, under Sec. Kennedy, has terminated all regional contracts at the end of September 2025. The WHI is unlike any other study in America, following over 160,000 women starting in the 1990s, and continues to follow around 42,000 women.

According to the New York Times, the study has led to more than 2,000 research papers and generated around $35 billion in savings, based on the number of cancer and cardiovascular disease cases that have been averted.  

On April 24, Maria Shriver tweeted that the head of NIH and Kennedy (her cousin) “assured me personally that the Women’s Health Initiative will not be cut.” We have reached out to HHS for comment.  

Talking Points Memo reported in early April that the entire team running the PRAMS (Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) database at CDC was fired. It was a decades-long research database tracking infant and maternal health from pregnancy through the postpartum period.

As part of mass HHS firings, NBC reported the elimination of the entire CDC team responsible for tracking the success rates of IVF clinics in helping patients have a live birth. As Aaron Levine, a Georgia Tech professor who worked with the CDC team over the last decade, told NBC:

“The data was produced at the clinic level every year, so you could say, ‘Is this clinic successful 15% of the time, 20% of the time, 25% of the time. And you can imagine that is super valuable information for patients considering IVF, or maybe considering IVF at multiple clinics, and trying to make their choices.”

The six-person team was made up of epidemiologists, data analysts and researchers, and their firing shocked IVF advocates, given Trump’s claims to be the “fertilization president.”

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day reported that $35 million in Title X funding was frozen on April 1: “California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and Utah will receive zero Title X dollars. Most of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Alaska will lose access as well. Other states impacted include Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.”

Politico reported later in April that the cuts reached $65 million. Clinics that had been given ten days at the start of April to fill out forms proving they weren’t promoting diversity had not received a response as of April 22.