The National Institutes of Health reached a settlement last week with 16 states over delayed reviews of research grant applications representing potentially billions of dollars for university and other institutions’ projects. The Dec. 29 settlement follows nine months of litigation between state attorneys general and the Trump administration after NIH withheld final decisions on hundreds of grants and “took the unprecedented step of canceling upcoming meetings for the agency’s review panels and delaying the scheduling of future meetings,” according to a Dec. 30 statement from Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office. Over 5,000 grants from across the country are covered by the settlement, according to a spokesperson for the attorney general. On the day it was filed, NIH issued decisions for 528 of them.
