May 5, 2025
While the document did not list how much funding would be cut, ACH was responsible for $154 million in grants and contracts last year
According to an email mistakenly made public, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to end more than a dozen university grants to improve Head Start and childcare policy.
The leaked document lists more than 150 research projects the HHS plans to terminate, according to The Associated Press. Many of these grants help to improve the lives of low-income children and families.
“These grants are aimed at learning how to make programs more effective at pursuing goals like healthy child development, reducing abuse and neglect, and promoting economic self-sufficiency,” Naomi Goldstein, who led the office for nearly two decades before retiring in 2022, told the AP.
She added, “It’s hard to see why they would want to cancel these efforts.”
HHS Has Cut Billions in Grants Since Trump Took Office
Under the Trump administration, other HHS divisions have cut billions of dollars in grants that contribute to public health, gender, and race. Some of these divisions that have faced cuts include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
The proposed grant terminations would undercut Head Start, a 60-year-old program overseen by the Administration for Children and Families under the Office of Head Start, which supports preschool and services for hundreds of thousands of low-income children.
In 2022, the Head Start program was funded to serve about 833,000 children, pregnant women in centers, family homes, and family child care homes. A majority of families identified as communities of color: 37% of students as Hispanic or Latino; 28% were Black or African American.
“Ending these projects without explanation not only wastes taxpayer dollars, it also threatens the evidence base behind key safety net programs,” Katie Hamm, ACF’s deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development until January, told the AP. “It’s alarming that grantees and contractors had to find out this way, through an accidental email, rather than a transparent process.”
While the document did not list how much funding would be cut, the office was responsible for $154 million in grants and contracts last year. Only 21 of the 177 listed grants were marked with a note to “continue funding.”
A department spokesperson told the AP that the draft was outdated.
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