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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's not just elite private colleges like Columbia and Harvard that the Trump administration is trying to defund, though that's what's mostly been in the news. It's also public colleges and universities that educate mostly working-class students. We'll focus now on the example of CUNY, the City University of New York, specifically in the area of public health. This is our Health and Climate Tuesday's section of the show for this week.

CUNY epidemiology professor Denis Nash from the School of Public Health is now in their crosshairs. He's been studying things like how to help people with anxiety and depression resist vaccine disinformation. That grant has now been canceled. On the climate track, he's been studying the effects of extreme weather events on the medical outcomes of people with HIV, among other things. Professor Nash joins me now. Thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Professor Nash: Thanks, Brian. Good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us about your canceled grant in more detail than I gave. What were you studying?

Professor Nash: Well, we had done some research in a cohort that we set up at CUNY, a national cohort that basically was tracking a bunch of different outcomes, including vaccinations once vaccines became available. We learned pretty early that there were things like common mental disorders, like anxiety and depression were associated with lower vaccination rates, even among people who had been vaccinated previously. We also learned that among those with mental health symptoms, they were more likely to state as reasons for not being up to date on vaccines, things that we knew were part of disinformation campaigns and part of misinformation.

Clearly, these campaigns were getting to them more than others, although they were getting to everyone. We designed a study and wrote a new NIH grant to do a randomized trial where we would randomize people in this category into three different groups to receive information about the COVID vaccine delivered in three different ways. One is like the standard public health messaging, you should get your COVID vaccine because it prevents severe disease.

Another one was aimed at dealing with the issue of disinformation and reminding people that they may be exposed to things that are not true about the vaccine. Here's how to recognize these things when you hear it, and here's what to do in response. It comes from the field of inoculation theory, in fact, and it's a way of preparing them and stealing them against the effects of disinformation.

The last arm was focused on hearing about some of the common barriers that people would constantly report on about getting in the way of vaccination and mental health, related to the perceived barriers that people sometimes could, in theory, overcome with some cognitive behavioral therapy. The third arm was cognitive behavioral therapy-based arm. We randomized about 1500 people to each of one of these three arms to see if they would improve in their vaccination intents and their vaccination outcomes.

Because it was really important for us and others to identify ways to get from levels of 21% around the US including among people who are at very high risk for severe disease, to get to higher levels. That was really the basis of the study. We had gotten through the trial, and we were in the phase of cleaning and analyzing the data when we got a stop-work order from NIH, which really ground things to a halt.

Brian Lehrer: How did you hear about that? How did the announcement come down?

Professor Nash: I was at a conference and I got a phone call from a reporter who had a leaked document from NIH had found its way to them. They said my grant was on the list of canceled grants. They read the name of the grant, and they asked me if I wanted to comment on it. I learned about it from a reporter, and I only officially got notification from NIH some hours later.

Brian Lehrer: Did you do anything to protest or appeal the cancellation or make your case for why this was a worthy study to continue?

Professor Nash: We have appealed. The termination letter itself an exercise in disinformation, stated lots of reasons that were just not true for why they were canceling the research. We thought we had pretty solid grounds for an appeal. We've done that. We have not yet heard back from the NIH. Of course, there are many legal proceedings underway right now that hopefully will also begin to reverse some of these decisions that we'll hopefully benefit from as well.

Brian Lehrer: Did you have to lay off people who were maybe hired grant specific for what they thought was a period of time that they had a job?

Professor Nash: Yes, unfortunately, we have. We had several people here on the team that were contributing to this project. Once the stop work order comes, we're not allowed to spend any money. They take the money. The money is no longer available, and we can't pay people to work on the project, and unfortunately, that affected several staff here.

Brian Lehrer: You are studying how to convince more people to take COVID vaccines. RFK policy is to get fewer people to take COVID vaccines. Is it that simple?

Professor Nash: Yes. Even more on top of that, I think their strategy is through disinformation. Although I don't think this was part of it, I can see that this is a particularly problematic avenue of inquiry as it goes against the strategy of those who are vaccine deniers.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we welcome your calls and text for CUNY epidemiology Professor Denis Nash from the School of Public Health on either specifically his research grant that was canceled or the larger question of research funding cancellations at CUNY in particular. More broadly, any other canceled grantee, scientists, or others want to tell your stories or ask them a question 212-433-WNYC. We will also get to RFK Jr.'s diagnosis last week of what the main health challenges are for America's children. I'll be curious to hear if there's some common ground between Professor Nash and the Health and Human Services secretary on any of that.

We can hear that from you, too. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 call or text. Before we leave COVID vaccines as a topic, your research was on that particular aspect of them. Also, it looks like the government is now going to require new vaccine research as if it was a totally new vaccine for this fall's COVID shot for people under 65. That may take too long for it to even be available. In addition, they may be not recommending that people under 65 take a COVID shot anymore unless they have certain immune system or other health conditions. Do you understand what rules they're promulgating and the implications?

Professor Nash: Well, I think what's happening here is the FDA is moving out of the emergency use authorization phase of the COVID vaccine, where the process of approving vaccines were less strict than the normal approval process for a new vaccine. They're moving into full approval. It seems that the philosophy of the new FDA leadership is that this vaccine is really only proven in their eyes, safe and effective for severe disease and death among those that are age 65 and older or those who have comorbidities from the age of 6 months and older.

This is not out of line with many other countries around the world. However, it does mean a big change here in the US. I think there's still room for debate and discussion around whether or not the policy scope is too limited or the approval scope is too limited. They do, as you say, offer an avenue for pharma companies to pursue in order to do new trials and produce new evidence that the FDA can consider in expanding the indication. As you say, that could take quite a long time, and it may be too big of a hurdle for pharma companies to jump over right now.

Brian Lehrer: There are even concerns that I've heard people express that for this fall's COVID vaccine for people who are clearly in the eligible category over 65 or with immune or other health conditions that are relevant, that they may not be available because of these restrictions. They may just not be profitable enough for the companies to produce under these circumstances. Are you concerned about that?

Professor Nash: Yes, I am. I'm concerned. I'm also just concerned that there are some. Some other considerations that just aren't factored into the approval process. I'm not hearing anything around the utility of the vaccine in preventing infections. Of course, it is not perfect by any means, but it is something that healthcare providers can use and people who are around, people who are vulnerable, elderly people, and their caretakers, they can use to reduce the risk to those groups.

These are some areas that are really not considered by the new approval process, and I think they should be. Another issue is related to long COVID. There's a large body of evidence that's emerging that is suggesting that in addition to preventing COVID infection, in some cases, the vaccine and boosters may prevent long COVID. These are things that I think need to be discussed more broadly.

Next, this issue is going to go to CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization of Practices. While they will not make a recommendation that is against what the vaccine is officially approved for, I can see that they may make a case for why more discussion and more evidence, and other things that FDA may consider. They can push back on some of these things, and the hope is that there will be a healthy dialogue from here.

Brian Lehrer: Looks like we're getting a call from another CUNY professor who also has had a research grant canceled, or let's see if I have that right. Jonathan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with CUNY Public Health Professor Denis Nash. Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hi. Thank you, Brian. First time, long time. I'm a biology professor at City College. I want to point out another issue about these funding cuts, and I take Dr. Nash's point entirely. Crucial aspect of these cuts is the loss of training programs. To become a doctor or a scientist is basically an extended apprenticeship. Federal support for the tuition or stipends of trainees is essential to the whole endeavor. To support the Whole pipeline from community college to postdoc. These sorts of programs are and have been at many CUNY campuses, including my own, for decades.

I've directed one program for over 20 years to support undergrads who want to pursue a PhD. To make this clear, to be a competitive doctoral student, then to be a good applicant and successful when you get there, you have to have research experience. If you're like many CUNY students, you come from a household with modest economic means you typically have a job. You got to pay for school and supplies, and rent for the family, which leaves very little time to pursue a laboratory research project in addition to one's classes.

The federal programs that have been cut make this possible. Then in return, we as society get someone like one of our alumni, Jonas Salk, known for the polio vaccine, who will do the basic and clinical work that society needs. The people who will be doing this work, like on Dr. Nash's team, do we want them all to come only from middle-class or above households? I don't think we do. These cuts really cut right to the heart of that.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Nash, you want to weigh in on the training piece that Jonathan is talking about?

Professor Nash: I do. I completely agree. I just want to first highlight CUNY is really like a jewel of this city. It's created for the public good and is a real engine of opportunity for New Yorkers and a resource for the world as we heard Jonas Salk as an example. At schools of public health like ours and other like stem oriented research-oriented fields like research isn't just something we do here. It's about how we teach. It's part of how we prepare the next generation of researchers.

Our students have to be trained both as discerning consumers of evidence from the latest research that's out there so that they can do their job and practice public health and epidemiology in an informed way. They also have to be really capable producers of research to effectively lead the field of public health forward. I couldn't agree more. When we lose this funding, our students really lose access to these experiences that make public health training relevant and rigorous.

Brian Lehrer: I think it raises even a broader issue than that. Jonathan, thank you for your call. There are all these other CUNY grant cancellations. We've been focusing first on yours because you're the guest, and it helps sometimes to go into detail about a specific one to help people understand the implications. According to CUNY stats, so far in 2025, there have been more than 70 research grants that have been canceled by the federal government totaling more than $17 million.

Not to mention the lost research. I think to the point that you and Jonathan were getting at, it's not just the elite Ivy League schools like Harvard and Columbia being hit. People may not realize that it's colleges and universities like CUNY too that do have mostly working-class and lower-income students or students from those families. Do you think it's important not to lose sight of that for people like me in the media, for example?

Professor Nash: 100%. In many ways, you could argue that CUNY is even more vulnerable to the effects of these kinds of cuts. We don't have deep pockets or an endowment that we can fall back on. Just as a reminder to everyone listening, CUNY is home to about 25 campuses around the city's five boroughs. We have 250,000 degree-seeking students and many more other students, millions of alum, many of them living right here in New York City.

Our graduates they're in your hospitals, they're in the city government, they're in classrooms and community-based organizations. Our students and grads, and faculty give back to the city in small ways every day. We really need to fight. It is going to be a fight when they come for CUNY. New Yorkers, we need to be ready.

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask you, Nash, if you have a take as a public health professor on RFK Jr.'s announcement last week of a diagnosis, I think he called it, of what's ailing American children. This included, "Today's children suffer more from chronic diseases such as asthma, allergies, obesity, autoimmune conditions, and behavioral disorders than any previous generation." Do you disagree with that at all?

Professor Nash: I don't disagree with much of the diagnosis. These are things that are very serious problems that that public health has been an epidemiology has been very concerned with for some time. In some ways, it seems like there could be an opportunity to align here because we view the problem as the same. I think where there might be some disagreement is what the solutions are to these problems and how to move forward. I can say a few things about that, but that's my concern.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, say something about that.

Professor Nash: In reading some of the language in this new report, it seems like there's a lot of individualizing the problem. Talking about putting the onus on Individuals and parents, and families for problems, for example, the food environment or chemicals in the food supply, air quality. These are really things that need to be addressed at a much higher level, at a systemic level, and not put on the individual.

This is, of course, what a public health approach is. It's moving away from the individual and trying to come up with solutions that benefit the public's health, that basically make the default environment a better one for food intake, a better one for physical activity, and so forth.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting that you went exactly to that. I was going to ask you exactly that question. Maybe they trained me well back when I went to public health school. The prescription likely to come this summer, meaning I guess policy proposals could be good on problems that you and he agree are real problems. If he actually gets the administration to say take on the processed food industry and doesn't place all the onus on individuals, parents and kids to resist what's on the shelves and being advertised like crazy.

The report did blame things like ultra-processed foods and other chemical exposures, not enough exercise, higher stress levels than in the past, and also too many prescription drugs. Whether you agree or disagree on too many prescription drugs, is he going to go for the pharmaceutical industry? I'm sure you agree on ultra-processed foods. Is he going to go for the processed food industry in some way? Do you have any indication yet?

Professor Nash: I don't, but it all points to things like regulation that would be needed. For example, if you want fewer pesticides, if you want fewer chemicals in the environment, less plastics, you need to work with the EPA. If you want the processed food to be different, you need to work through the FDA. These are the very same areas of government that are being dismantled in many ways. It doesn't bode well for what many of us think are the right solutions to some of these major problems.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a text from a listener that puts a new wrinkle on all these research grant cancellations in this country. Listener writes, "I'm not an epidemiologist. I work in conservation biology, but I had a successful National Science Foundation grant application last year. I was planning on starting a research faculty position at Rutgers this fall funded by that grant. However, since the National Science Foundation has frozen all new grants and payments for existing grants, that job is in limbo. Fortunately, I also just had a successful interview for a faculty position in Belgium. Rather than live with the uncertainty here, I will be taking my research abroad."

Then the listener writes, "It seems crazy to me that if a student or colleague asked me for job advice right now, I might say consider leaving the country. We're at that point." Then they write, "This is going to be absolutely devastating to American science and to a whole generation of American scientists." We're already hearing professor about international students who Trump is trying to stop Harvard from even being able to accept international students. If I'm reading that story right.

All the uncertainty about what could happen to your visa as a student. A lot of students who arguably the US benefits by having here not wanting to come or come back to school in this country. Now we're hearing from this that some scientists who've been trained here may be taking their expertise abroad. Brain drain is usually what we hear about countries other than the US regarding people who come here. Do you think it's starting to happen in reverse?

Professor Nash: I do. I completely agree with the texter's analysis of the situation. It is really unfortunate. You know that you've created a bad problem when some of your best and brightest people who are winning these kinds of fellowships and scholarships, coming with important research ideas that need to be advanced that come up against the wall of intolerance for some of the scientific ideas that are being put out there. This is really bad for the US. I think it's going to greatly hurt employment.

It's going to contribute to the economic downturn that we're already experiencing in significant ways. Yes, I do think that other governments around the world, not only do they see the importance of the issues that people need to work on that the US is now saying is not a priority, or it's junk science or DEI. They also see the talent that they could get involved in some of their work, and they're taking advantage of it. It makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: That brings me to at least a quick mention of another piece of research that you were doing. I don't know if maybe you completed this one. They couldn't cancel the grant, you tell me. I read that your last study was on the effects of extreme weather events on medical outcomes for people with HIV. If I have that right, people may not think of extreme weather events as related to HIV as opposed to much more direct health risks like from heat or flooding or drought, or things like that.

We know they want to defund climate research, and they want to defund things that seem to be DEI because they're LGBTQ oriented, and HIV rightly or wrongly falls into that category for them. How do you even think of that field of study, extreme weather events, as it relates to HIV outcomes?

Professor Nash: Great question, and thanks for asking me about this project. This is one of our global projects we've been running me with many colleagues globally, a large cohort of over 2 million people that have enrolled in HIV care in 44 countries around the world, including the United States. We have been very busy over the last 20 years or so studying their outcomes and trying to understand and inform ways to improve the delivery of HIV services around the world.

One of the things that we began to think about is what are some of the determinants of outcomes that maybe we don't know about? We know that the HIV pandemic, the areas of highest prevalence, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa, are also among those areas of the world most affected by extreme weather. You can think about extreme rainfall, but another big one here is drought and the effects of a lack of rainfall basically on the food supply, on food security.

This is a way that has the potential to greatly disrupt not only an individual's access to routine care that they need for their HIV and their medications, but perhaps even the entire trajectory of the HIV pandemic. It's never been studied. It's something that we are actively engaged in studying right now as part of a four-year study, and it's a big area of inquiry for us. This started as a global project, and now, of course, we know extreme weather events are a huge driver of outcomes in this country as well.

It's a focus of our work not only for HIV. We started with HIV because we had the cohort of people, and it was global, and it allowed us to look in areas where there's a lot of diversity in the extreme weather event exposures. It went back 20 years. We could really begin to look at a lot of extreme weather events and their effects in this population. Of course, it's relevant to many, many public health outcomes, especially those that require ongoing access to the healthcare system.

I think we're only beginning to scratch the surface of a really important area of inquiry around the effects of extreme weather on health outcomes. We need to be able to inform ways that governments around the world can become more resilient, can adapt to what is a reality of more extreme weather events, more intense extreme weather events. With time, we have to be understanding the best ways to adapt.

Brian Lehrer: Last question from a listener. I think this is to suggest that the Trump administration, including RFK Jr. may well take on industry in a systemic way to deal with those chronic childhood conditions. Listener writes, "Food dyes were already banned by the FDA early in this Trump administration." That's all that's in the text. I think the implication is, and we know it wasn't all, all food dyes that a lot of scientists would consider harmful, but they did ban some. I think the implication is maybe before you dismiss them too easily, maybe they are willing to take on the corporations. Any reaction?

Professor Nash: Well, again, I definitely see opportunity in here to align with an important agenda of the health of our kids around the country. I hope that that's what's going on. I also know the track record. The worry here is that this is just a exploitation of a crisis to move forward political and ideological agenda. I think it remains to be seen how this is going to play out. Ideally, we would see real policies, evidence-informed policies where the evidence doesn't exist.

There would be research agendas to generate the evidence, not by dilettantes, but by actual scientists who are able to rigorously answer the research questions, and ultimately, an approach that does make children healthy in the US. This is what we need. I think we all agree on the diagnosis, but we have to find the way forward together.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, that's our Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show for this week. We thank CUNY epidemiology Professor Denis Nash from the School of Public Health for coming on and being willing to discuss his research grant that was recently canceled by the federal government. Thank you very much, Professor Nash.

Professor Nash: Thank you.

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