On August 5, KFF Health News’ Don Thompson wrote that Neeta Thakur, a doctor and scientist, has taken the lead in defending public health science against President Donald Trump’s political agenda. Thakur, a pulmonologist and medical director of the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Chest Clinic, is the lead plaintiff among six UC researchers who in June secured a class-action preliminary injunction against several federal agencies. These agencies attempted to implement Trump’s executive orders aimed at eliminating research grants focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The administration has filed a notice of appeal, and the outcome, whether Thakur and her colleagues succeed, could influence both the future of academic research and the health of those she’s spent her life trying to help, Thompson reported.
“We don’t think our work should be political, to be honest,” Margot Kushel, who directs the UCSF Action Research Center for Health Equity, said in a statement acquired by KFF. “Saving people’s lives and making sure people don’t die doesn’t seem to me that it should be a partisan issue.”
Thakur said that after the sudden funding cuts, she and the other researchers “felt pretty powerless and found that the class-action lawsuit was a way for us to come together and take a stand." “Thakur said her studies on health equity and health disparities saw growing federal support during the COVID pandemic and a national focus on racism spurred by the murder of George Floyd. The EPA had solicited the grant in 2021 for her and her team to research how climate change affects underserved communities.”
Thompson wrote that “Trump, in one of several executive orders blocking federal funding for DEI programs, said they 'use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences' that he said have ‘prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.’”
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a temporary order blocking grant terminations, affecting the EPA along with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. Lin’s ruling was not a nationwide injunction like the one restricted by the U.S. Supreme Court in a June decision, Thompson explained.
“The lasting damage is not lost on Thakur. If the grants ultimately disappear, universities won’t have the typical programs to train students or to support academic research, she said, adding that, ‘I think there are concerns that the sort of divestment from science and research in these particular areas will cause generations of impact.’”
