UNC Charlotte Sees LGBTQ Research Grant Terminated

Moments after being sworn-in as the president for the second time on Jan. 20, Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders to kickstart the agenda he aims to accomplish during his second term, one of which stated that the government will only recognize two sexes while another ended “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the country.

Aside from the extreme funding cuts from Elon Musk’s DOGE and other Project 2025-inspired measures carried out by the Trump administration since then, the executive measures signed on Trump’s first day have already impacted millions of Americans across the country, including in Charlotte. 

One program that’s seen its funding stripped was a UNC Charlotte project that aimed to improve the healing trajectory for LGBTQ victims of sexual violence. 

The research was led by principal investigator Jessamyn Moxie, co-investigator Annelise Mennicke and six paid student researchers who worked to educate their peers about how to respond when somebody discloses that they’ve experienced sexual violence. 

“There’s a lot of research that demonstrates that that initial reaction to disclosure can really kind of make or break somebody’s healing trajectory, and with a little bit of training, people can respond better, which can promote health and well being,” Mennicke told Queen City Nerve.

On March 20, her team received a letter from The National Institutes of Health (NIH) notifying them of the immediate termination of the $450,000 grant they received in April 2024.

“This award no longer effectuates agency priorities,” the letter read. “Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities. It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize these research programs.”

Mennicke believes the grant was terminated because they included transgender people.

“The mere inclusion of a trans person is what made us ineligible for ‘current agency priorities,’ but that is the erasure of an entire group of people who exist and are part of our society and are part of our community and have health needs,” she said.

“It really just sets the stage for the dehumanization of entire groups of people that is a very slippery slope.”

UNC Charlotte alone has already lost 10 grants, Mennicke said, four of which were related to the LGBT community or DEI efforts. The others were related to climate change. Without these inclusive grants, the ability to create interventions tailored to people’s unique experiences and needs will continue to be limited, she said.

Historically, health research has been focused on homogeneous groups of white men and later white women, restricting countless minority groups’ access to diverse, comprehensive health findings.

The NIH has recently made intentional efforts to close the gap and include minoritized communities in research recruitment and funding, but those efforts are regressing under the current administration. 

“Without that funding, we will go back to a place where we have kind of universal interventions that don’t work for everyone, and therefore don’t really work,” said Mennicke. “The people who are employed in our study have many diverse identities, so there’s going to be a very clear message that they are not valued, they are not important, and their experiences don’t matter.”

Mennicke and her team’s project was a response to the NIH’s priorities at the time of the research’s inception. The team was nearly one year into a three-year contract with $400,000 still untouched. 

With the current administration changing federal funding and institutional priorities, Charlotte will not see the return on investment on Mennick’s team’s hard work.

The NIH reported that, in fiscal year 2023, every $1 of NIH funding generated around $2.46 in return. Following that math, the termination of Mennicke’s research represents a loss of over $1 million in the community, she said.

Read more: Critical Program for Unaccompanied Children Scrapped Due to Trump Cuts

“We are still compliant with NIH stated priorities, and you can’t just overnight change those priorities without going through the process of creating a new strategic plan,” she said. “We had a contract in place … We were still compliant with federal agency priorities, and we should still be allowed to finish our grant based on that.”

While some researchers and institutions across the country have filed lawsuits to challenge federal funding terminations, Mennicke’s team is currently considering filing an appeal.

“We have to remember [that] at the end of the day, we are people, and people are being hurt by this,” she said. “One person’s paycheck or one person’s wallet should not supersede the people that we have working on this grant.”