NIH-funded Research Drives Innovation at SPH.
How Federal Funding Propels the SPH Research Making a Difference in People’s Lives
With federal research funding cuts looming for academia and medical centers across the US, we take at look at how federally funded research at SPH has produced tangible results that benefit real lives in real communities.
Research has always been a core part of the School of Public Health’s mission to promote justice, human rights, and equity across local and global communities. The data that SPH faculty and staff produce every day informs health policies and programs, supports practical solutions to public health issues, and empowers individuals to make evidence-based decisions about their health.
Federal investment in this work is a hallmark of the US research infrastructure, and recent attempts to reduce funding provided to academic institutions and medical centers threaten to erode medical and public health advancement across the nation and globe. On February 7, the National Institutes of Health announced a new policy—now temporarily blocked—that limits its reimbursement for administrative and overhead costs related to research to 15 percent—a drastic cut from the average reimbursement of 30 percent, and for many universities, up to 70 percent. The move is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to significantly scale back on federal spending.
“The changes proposed by the NIH and the very brief timeline for their implementation could have a seriously adverse effect on these operations and many others,” said Boston University President Melissa Gilliam in an email to the university community on Tuesday, February 11. “Boston University is committed to supporting the groundbreaking work being done by our researchers in labs across our campuses and around the world, and we want you to know this remains a top priority for us as an institution.”
No matter the outcome of the funding cuts, the School of Public Health remains committed to its mission of creating the conditions for a healthier world. Our faculty are leading the way in maternal health, infectious diseases, climate change, substance use, and a host of other critical public health issues. Below are a few highlights of how their work has widened knowledge, propelled interventions, and created tangible health benefits to the general public.
Reducing the Global Spread of HIV
“Funding mechanisms like the NIH’s support of Prov/Bos CFAR help encourage the collaboration that fuels innovation, leading to good policy and better use of public resources for our communities.”
Laura White, professor of biostatistics and MEMBER of the Prov/Bos CFAR
Throughout the 1980s, rates of AIDS deaths in the United States rose precipitously year over year. By the time the AIDS crisis peaked in the mid 1990s, more than 300,000 people had lost their lives to the disease. With the development of life-saving treatments like antiretroviral therapy (ART), the death rate has declined dramatically, but it has yet to reach zero. HIV, the viral precursor to AIDS, is still a chronic condition without a cure that can have devastating effects on an individual’s life and the lives of their family. Fortunately, the infrastructure that supported the country’s progress over the past three decades still stands and continues to deliver research discoveries that advance the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS.
The Providence/Boston Center for AIDS Research (Prov/Bos CFAR) is one of 19 NIH-funded Centers for AIDS Research across the country working to reduce the global impact of HIV through multidisciplinary research. Since Boston University and Boston Medical Center joined the collaborative in 2015, Prov/Bos CFAR has awarded more than 50 developmental grants, totaling roughly $2 million, to investigators and had its findings cited in over 600 peer-reviewed publications. The collaboration has also produced valuable insights on the interactions between substance use disorders and HIV in the US. In February 2024, for example, SPH shared the results of a study funded by Prov/Bos CFAR showing that heavy alcohol and drug use were associated with an increased risk of falls among people living with HIV, calling attention to the need for more targeted screening and interventions.
“NIH-funded centers like Prov/Bos CFAR are critical for supporting new collaborations, innovative research, and supporting the next generation of scientists. Prov/Bos CFAR has been a very productive and successful collaboration, leveraging the unique strengths of the partnered institutions to create impactful research findings,” says Laura White, a professor of biostatistics at SPH and a long-time member of Prov/Bos CFAR. There remain important challenges for CFAR to address, she says, such as the significant economic costs of treatment and prevention as well as the uneven distribution of infection risk across communities.
“We work to try to determine better strategies to serve underserved populations and alleviate suffering,” says White. “Funding mechanisms like the NIH’s support of Prov/Bos CFAR help encourage the collaboration that fuels innovation, leading to good policy and better use of public resources for our communities.”
Learn more:
Heavy Alcohol, Drug Use Linked to Increased Risk of Falls among People with HIV
Lowering Risks of Extreme Heat Exposure
“[My] NIH-funded research has not only informed workers and industries about the health risks of working in extreme heat, but it has contributed evidence to support interventions for workers to prevent heat-related illnesses of all kinds, including kidney disease.”
Madeleine Scammell, associate professor of environmental health
Ever since she secured her first NIH grant to study the effects of heat on workers in Central America, Madeleine Scammell, associate professor of environmental health, has dedicated the bulk of her career to advancing our understanding of heat and health. In addition to her ongoing research into the role of heat exposure in the chronic kidney disease epidemic in El Salvador and Nicaragua, she is also a co-principal investigator on the Chelsea & East Boston Heat (C-HEAT) study, an academic-community partnership between SPH and the grassroots organization GreenRoots that aims to build the community’s capacity to respond to extreme heat events.
“[My] NIH-funded research has not only informed workers and industries about the health risks of working in extreme heat, but it has contributed evidence to support interventions for workers to prevent heat-related illnesses of all kinds, including kidney disease,” says Scammell. “My first NIH grant was pivotal to not only my career, but to the doctoral students I have worked with and are now working in government, with CDC and at OSHA, and academia. Not only that, but I have built a repository of biological samples at [BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine] that is analyzed on an ongoing basis as part of a large consortium of researchers studying this form of chronic kidney disease across Central America and India.”
As a resident of Chelsea, Scammell counts herself among the real people to have benefitted from C-HEAT’s work in the neighborhood. The data collected by the project has been useful to the health department in determining the hottest and coolest area of the city, she says, enabling its leadership to make informed decisions around heat warnings and interventions to protect vulnerable populations. For example, upon identifying an urban heat island—a particular city block that can become especially hot—C-HEAT partnered with the City of Chelsea Department of Housing and Urban Development, local Boys and Girls Club, and area residents to convert the area into a cooler greenspace. The trees planted are now cared for by residents who are compensated as “tree keepers,” and the idea has spread to other city blocks. A short film documents the story.
Learn more:
Who Feels the Heat?
Amid Climate Change, SPH Researchers Study Chelsea’s ‘Heat Island’
Predicting Our Ability to Conceive
These findings offset fears and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and infertility, and encouraged people to make evidence-based decisions about what’s best for their own health and the health of their families.
Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology and principal investigator of PRESTO
In 2024, the birth rate in the US was .12 percent lower than the rate in 2023, reflecting a worrying decline in births over the last few decades. For more than a decade, researchers for the NIH-funded Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO) at SPH have examined lifestyle, environmental, and medical factors that may be affecting fertility and pregnancy outcomes, and driving this decline. The web-based preconception cohort study is the largest of its kind worldwide, following thousands of individuals ages 21-45 who are trying to conceive.
The researchers have published studies that identify modifiable changes people can make to increase their chances of conceiving and having a successful pregnancy. The online structure of the study enables the team to adapt its research quickly and efficiently and address pressing public health issues in real time. The benefit proved effective during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when vaccine misinformation was rampant and public concern started growing about the overall safety of COVID vaccines, including whether they affected fertility. The PRESTO team was able to add COVID-related questions to their surveys and publish a study that showed that the COVID vaccine does not cause infertility.
“The funding for this work enabled us to address a critical public health issue with immediate value for people who were trying to conceive or thinking about conceiving,” says Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology and the principal investigator of PRESTO. “These findings offset fears and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and infertility, and encouraged people to make evidence-based decisions about what’s best for their own health and the health of their families. If this type of work is defunded, the U.S. risks slowing innovation and compromising the high-quality research that drives scientific progress.”
Learn more:
Can We Predict Our Ability to Conceive
Researchers Receive $300K NIH Grant to Study COVID Vaccination and Menstruation
Staving Off Cognitive Decline
“Investments in children attending school longer paid off decades later in reduced dementia risk.”
Maria Glymour, chair and professor of epidemiology
Working in a memory-care facility after college was a galvanizing experience for Maria Glymour, chair and professor of epidemiology. Interacting with residents piqued her interest in understanding the devastating effects of memory loss on people’s lives. In 2023, Glymour arrived to SPH with years of experience studying the factors that contribute to cognitive decline and how individuals and families can prevent, stall, or treat life-changing diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). She has published many NIH-funded studies on ADRD risk, and is currently leading research that explores whether interventions targeting alcohol use, depression, vision or hearing impairments, or social isolation can reduce the development of ADRD.
Glymour’s past work includes analyses of education levels and dementia risk, which indicated that increasing educational attainment delays dementia onset. “In several studies, we evaluated dementia risk in people who—when they were children—were required by the state law in the place where they lived to attend extra years of schooling,” she says. Changes in state laws to increase mandated schooling reduced dementia risk for those same children as they became older adults. “Essentially, these investments in children attending school longer paid off decades later in reduced dementia risk.”
In another study, she evaluated if memory functioning of older adults is harmed by major surgery—a fear that leads many older adults to delay needed surgery because of concerns that the period of anesthesia may harm their brain health, she says. “We evaluated coronary bypass surgery and found that people who got surgery were not harmed cognitively over the long run.”
As more than 13 million people are expected to develop Alzheimer’s disease in the US by 2050, this work to prevent and treat ADRD should remain a research priority.
Learn more:
Both High and Low HDL Cholesterol Tied to Increased Risk of Dementia
Validating the Symptoms of Gulf War Illness
These ‘toxic wounds’…are invisible in that they are not as readily seen as a missing limb but can be just as debilitating.
Kimberly Sullivan, research associate professor of environmental health
One third of all Gulf War Veterans have been suffering with Gulf War Illness (GWI), a chronic debilitating disorder, for over 30 years. But veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War have felt that they were not being taken seriously about their illness—and over 80 percent of their claims for GWI were still denied until very recently—says Kimberly Sullivan, research associate professor of environmental health.
The symptoms of this illness are largely invisible, ranging from chronic pain and fatigue, to respiratory and gastrointestinal issues, memory problems, and chronic headaches.
Through funding from the Department of Defense, Sullivan served for nearly 10 years as the principal investigator and director of the former Gulf War Illness Consortium, a multi-institutional initiative based at SPH that aimed to identify GWI biomarkers to improve diagnosis and develop targeted treatments for Gulf War veterans. The GWIC is now housed within the Boston Biorepository, Recruitment, and Integrative Network (BBRAIN), a four-site recruitment and 10-site data-mining project that Sullivan launched in 2019, which serves as a repository and critical resource for GWI researchers.
“We now know that GWI was caused by toxic chemicals including sarin nerve gas agents, pesticides and anti-nerve gas pills that they were exposed to during the war based on our extensive research in this area,” Sullivan says.
The BU-led research team has provided the crucial evidence linking these toxic exposures with the chronic health problems seen in ailing GW veterans. “Our research team can now predict which veterans meet GWI criteria with about 71-90 percent accuracy based on blood, genetic and brain imaging marker studies,” says Sullivan.
The researchers can also determine who meets age-related mild cognitive impairment and may be at risk for developing Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
“Continued funding for this research will provide us the ability to establish much-needed treatments for these veterans and to potentially ward off or slow the development of these age-related disorders,” Sullivan says.
