The Great Asian American Exclusion from Health Funding
By J. J. Ghosh | 03 Jun, 2026

Why Asian Americans receive only 0.17% of the NIH's total health research budget even though we make up 6-8% of the population.

When I heard that the AAPI community was underrepresented when it comes to clinical research funding by the National Institutes of Health, I expected the worst.

Given that our community accounts for between 6-8% of the US population, I shuddered to guess how much less than that we make up in funding.

But despite how imaginative I’ve always considered myself, I was simply incapable of coming anywhere close to the actual number: .17%.

In case you think you misread that, or that I misplaced a digit, I’ll spell it out:

Between 1992 and 2018, the NIH spent $451 billion on health research.  Asian Americans received $775 million of it — less than one-fifth of one percent of the total budget.

We deserved a $6 tip and got seventeen cents instead.

And that’s not all.  AAPI social science researchers are also 74% less likely than their white counterparts to receive NIH or NSF grant funding.  So not only is the research on our community underfunded — the researchers who would most naturally pursue it are systematically less likely to get the grants to do so.

“We face discrimination as researchers,” said Stella Yi, assistant professor at NYU.  “We hear that Asian Americans don’t count, they don’t have health disparities.”

This is what structural invisibility looks like when you put a dollar figure on it.  But fortunately, the same democracy that produced this problem is also the one that can fix it.

The Power of The Purse

The NIH doesn’t fund itself.  Its budget is set by Congress, its priorities are shaped by whoever is in the White House, and its grant decisions are made by a bureaucracy that reflects the values and blind spots of the people who run it.

Which means what happens to AAPI health research funding is not a scientific question.  It’s a political one.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI)

And right now, the politics aren’t going well.

The Trump administration cut or froze over $3 billion in previously approved research grants from the NIH and National Science Foundation in 2025, targeting grants tied to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.  Around $1.4 billion remained frozen or canceled as of the beginning of 2026.

In August 2025, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to slash $783 million in NIH research grants in a 5-4 ruling, with the majority allowing the termination of grants the administration deemed inconsistent with its priorities.

Minority health researchers are now walking a tightrope, trying to maintain funding without crossing what one researcher called “the vague line into diversity, equity and inclusion.”  The NIH’s own spokesperson framed the administration’s approach as “bringing the focus back to real science” — implicitly suggesting that research on health disparities in minority communities is not real science.

The Trump administration’s FY2027 budget proposal seeks cuts of 41% to the NIH and 57% to the NSF.  Congress rejected similarly sharp cuts in FY2026, holding funding largely stable — but the administration has continued to reshape spending quietly, paying off existing multiyear grants while funding fewer new ones.  NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya suggested in December that even reinstated grants may face termination in 2026.

As much as we might feel inclined to blame the Trump administration for our problems, the problem goes well beyond the current president.  In fact, Presidents Clinton and Obama each occupied the Oval Office during the period when our NIH funding clocked in at .17%, in addition, of course, to President George W. Bush.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ)

In other words, our exclusion is bipartisan.

For a community that was already receiving 0.17% of NIH funding, a federal government that treats minority health research as ideologically suspect is not a minor inconvenience.  It’s an existential threat to the research infrastructure that was barely there to begin with.

“It’s very difficult to tailor solutions or design them if you don’t know where the problem is,” said one health researcher who asked not to be identified.  That was true before 2025.  It’s more true now.

What Good Looks Like

The funding gap didn’t appear overnight, and it won’t close overnight.  But there are models for what progress looks like — and they share a common feature: AAPI people in positions of power.

Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, has introduced the Health Equity and Accountability Act in every Congress since 2003 — legislation that would directly address health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, expand health information technology infrastructure, and require federal accountability for reducing those disparities.  It hasn’t yet passed.  She keeps introducing it.  That is what sustained legislative advocacy looks like.

Stanford is now one of five sites for ARISE — a national cohort study of 10,000 Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders designed to build the health research infrastructure that decades of underfunding never produced.  “There has been a lack of research on Asian Americans because of a misconception that they are generally well-educated and healthy, compared to other minorities,” said Ann Hsing, the study’s principal investigator.  ARISE exists because researchers and advocates fought for it.  Its findings will inform policy.  That policy will be shaped by who is in office when it arrives.

There are currently three AAPI senators — Tammy Duckworth, Mazie Hirono, and Andy Kim — representing 3% of a body that governs a community that is 6-7% of the population.  In the House, an estimated 18 of 435 seats are held by AAPI members — 4.1%.  There are zero AAPI governors.

The math isn’t complicated.  More AAPI legislators means more AAPI-specific legislation.  More AAPI-specific legislation means more AAPI-specific funding.  More AAPI-specific funding means more research.  More research means we actually know what’s happening to our community’s health — and can do something about it.

The Midterms

In our ongoing AAPI Factor series, we’ve been tracking 2026 Senate and House races where the AAPI community could tip the balance.  The argument for AAPI political representation in those pieces has been framed mostly around immigration, trade, and civil rights.

It should also be framed around health research.

Connie Chan and Saikat Chakrabarti in San Francisco, Aisha Wahab in the race to replace Eric Swalwell — these aren’t abstract representation arguments.  They’re concrete levers.  Every AAPI seat in Congress is a vote that can push for NIH funding equity, for data disaggregation, for the kinds of programs that made the ARISE study possible.

Every AAPI senator is another Mazie Hirono who can introduce the Health Equity and Accountability Act and keep introducing it until it passes.

The seventeen cents we got from every dollar of NIH research funding was not an accident.  It was the result of decades of decisions made by people who were not us, about us, without us in the room.

The cure is not a better grant application.  It’s more seats at the table — and the will to use them.