$6.2 Million: NIH Funded a Study on Asthma in Transgender Patients. Asthma Is Real. The Population Framing Is the Question.

§ 01 / The Study

NIH NHLBI Funded $6.2 Million to Study Asthma Mechanisms and Treatment Outcomes Specifically in Transgender Individuals

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded a multi-year R01 grant for research into asthma outcomes, mechanisms, and treatment responses in transgender populations. The scientific basis is not implausible: published literature documents higher rates of asthma and respiratory conditions among transgender individuals, potentially attributable to hormone therapy effects on lung function, social stress pathways, and environmental exposures associated with gender nonconformity. DOGE flagged the grant as part of a broader review of NIH transgender health research, which collectively totaled hundreds of millions in active grants.

The policy question DOGE raises is not whether asthma is real — it is — or even whether transgender individuals have different health outcomes. The question is whether $6.2 million in NHLBI discretionary grant funding is best allocated to a population-specific study of approximately 1.6 million individuals, versus continuing research into asthma mechanisms affecting 25 million Americans. NIH prioritization decisions involve real tradeoffs between population-specific research and broadly applicable basic science.

What DOGE Is Arguing

DOGE’s position is not that transgender people don’t get asthma — they do — but that NIH spent the Biden years prioritizing identity-group-specific research at the expense of broader scientific priorities. The Trump administration’s EO 14168 directed NIH to pause or terminate transgender health grants pending review. The research community argues that health disparity research by definition studies population-specific outcomes and that the DOGE framing conflates legitimate medical research with political ideology. The funding decision is a priorities question with a dollar figure: $6.2 million.

§ 02 / The NIH Portfolio

NIH’s transgender health research portfolio expanded significantly under Biden — from a handful of grants in 2016 to dozens of active R01s, program projects, and center grants by 2024. House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans compiled a list of what they characterized as politicized research spending, with this asthma study among the examples. NIH defended each grant on individual scientific merit as reviewed by peer-review study sections. The Trump administration’s review did not engage with individual scientific merit but applied a categorical rule: grants studying “gender ideology” were subject to termination.

What This Means

$6.2 million in NIH grant funding for a study of asthma outcomes in transgender patients. Asthma is real; health disparities by population are a legitimate research area; whether this specific grant represented the best use of $6.2 million in NHLBI discretionary funding is a priorities question. The Trump administration applied a categorical rule under EO 14168 and terminated or paused transgender health research grants without engaging individual scientific merit reviews. The medical research community has challenged those terminations as politically-motivated disruptions to peer-reviewed science.

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