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Experts criticize NIH for funding this research
The National Institutes of Health awarded nearly half a million dollars to study “gender-affirming care for BIPOC and rural gender diverse youth,” with some of that money coming after President Trump took office.
The most recent entry for the study shows the federal government spent $143,000 on the project in fiscal year 2025. However, another government database shows that taxpayers spent $428,296 on the research since April 2023.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provided the funding to a study conducted by Dr. Gina Sequeira, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Her study would look at how technology could be used to connect patients with “gender specialists,” according to the grant’s summary.
The College Fix reached out to Sequeira for comment via email twice in the past three weeks. The Fix asked for her vision for the platform, the needs she discovered in transgender rural and BIPOC youth, and whether or not her research had met with challenges from the NIH under the Trump administration. She did not respond to either email. The medical school where she works also did not respond to a voicemail seeking help contacting her.
She regularly researches barriers around transgender medicine and speaks out in favor of the procedures for minors.
The Fix also contacted the Department of Health and Human Services via phone and email in the past several weeks to ask about the continued funding despite Trump’s executive orders on gender ideology. The HHS did not respond for comment.
However, an ethicist said President Trump is right to oppose the procedures for minors and urged further research funding restrictions.
“The Trump administration rightly opposes inflicting sex-rejecting procedures on children, and it should ensure that federal research dollars are not spent to facilitate these harmful practices,” Nathanael Blake, a fellow on family issues for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told The Fix via email.
He also criticized advocates of pediatric transgender procedures: “Encouraging children to reject and harm their natural, healthy bodies is wrong, and the NIH and HHS should not be funding projects that encourage and enable sex-rejecting procedures for children.”
A researcher on medical accountability said the funding of this study shows the problems within the National Institutes of Health.
“This grant is yet another data point underscoring how deeply ideologically corrupted the NIH had become, and the urgency for the Trump Administration to clean up the organization,” Ian Kingsbury with medical reform group Do No Harm told The Fix via a media statement.
He also challenged the project’s abstract, which stated that gender-affirming care has mental health benefits, calling it “a dubious claim based on shoddy, unreliable evidence.”
The Center for Accountability in Medicine, which he directs, regularly reviews research and comments on what it sees as flaws in academic papers.
He called on the NIH to “support ambitious biomedical research that provides novel insights on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illness.”
Kingsbury said he is “hopeful that the journey back to foundational principles is underway, even if it is long and strenuous.”
Some research which focuses on transgender issues has been restored after previously being cut or paused, according to an independent tracker of funding cuts under the Trump administration.
The Fix also attempted to reach the listed program official for this grant. Amronrat Chalongbutra’s email returned an out of the office response on June 11 indicating she would return the following day, but she has yet to respond further in the past several weeks.
