Eliyahu Gasson & Ember Duke | opinions editor & layout editor

When public health senior Destiny Smith was conducting her capstone research on health equity and gaps in U.S. maternal health policy, studies she’d referenced pertaining to systemic racism, class and gender inequity began to vanish. Luckily, she said, she had printed copies and found some alternatives.

“I was able to find good resources, but I know I would have been able to find better resources pertaining specifically to my topic, if it wasn’t censored,” Smith said.

Smith, along with other researchers at Duquesne and across the country, are facing changes to research funding, language censorship, data accessibility, unclear policies and guidelines. At a faculty summit on March 12 in the Union Ballroom, University Provost David Dausey and Vice Provost for Research and Innovation Elisabeth Healey heard and addressed faculty concerns.

Urmi Ashar, the director of Duquesne’s public health program, said she noticed studies and data sets disappearing from reliable websites like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The change affects both her ability to teach and her undergraduate students’ research projects.

“If we can’t access that information, it becomes really difficult trying to figure out which of the data sources actually can be relied upon, because some of them have political slant to it,” Ashar said.

According to The New York Times, there are 197 terms which can lead to scientific research documents being removed from government websites. Though the list is not official, it has been compiled from memos and guidelines released by federal agencies. “Women,” “men,” “LGBT,” and “Black” are just some of the words federal agency heads have instructed their departments to avoid.

Arthur Harper, instructional design librarian for Gumberg Library, asked Dausey and Healy about the words that could get a grant proposal or research document flagged.

“The response we were given is that it was different for every single government website,” he said. “Sometimes they reach out to us and it’s up to us to follow up. Sometimes it’s a rejection, sometimes it’s an opportunity to resubmit.”

Government agencies began taking pages off of their websites in January following an executive order from President Donald Trump to remove any materials promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

Another executive order from Trump ordered agencies to remove and stop issuing both internal and external messages which “inculcate gender ideology.”

“Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology,” the executive order states.

Public health is reliant on social determinants, such as poverty, race and gender as it can determine previous care and health education, Ashar said. So, when studies disappear it puts the whole community at risk.

Ashar and other faculty members had help from Harper in retrieving studies archived on datarescueproject.org by other universities.

A working group of faculty and administrators has been established to keep up with the issues, though they aren’t sure if and when the university will be impacted by changes at the federal level, according to Dausey who is on the working group.

He said a challenge of it is that research which is not a priority to the Trump administration will either have to find new funding routes or will have to be modified to be consistent with federal priorities.

“There’s a question if currently funded research doesn’t match to existing priorities, whether that research will be impacted,” Dausey said. “Either those funding dollars will be pulled and that will not be funded moving ahead, or if you know beyond this calendar year, this fiscal year, those funds will be modified or changed. And we’re working right now to understand the answers to those questions.”

On Feb. 20, The Duke published an article on the NIH’s plan to cut indirect costs to a flat rate of 15%. Duquesne’s rate is currently 38%. Indirect costs go toward maintaining facilities, utilities, laboratories and equipment among other things.

“The NIH is one of the largest places where the university receives research funding from the federal government. I think it’s about somewhere around 60%” Dausey said. “For us [that] would be a few $100,000 of funding annually that we would have to think about how we were going to support that research in different ways, and that would impact some of the facilities and funding that the university has in place.”

Healey said in an email to The Duke the workgroup will continue to assess the federal changes and is “exploring alternative sources of funding.”

“We are looking closely at each individual grant and agency request to understand the potential impacts on this research,” she said.

A survey to collect faculty feedback was sent out March 13, and will remain open for the foreseeable future, said Melissa Loughner, assistant to the provost.

Paige Mirsky, graduate biotechnology researcher, said the NIH and CDC layoffs are concerning.

“We have limited contact already,” Mirsky said. “We have a 30-day window to submit [clinical findings] So, if they put us on clinical hold for something for 30 days, if they don’t follow up with us in that 30 days, we have the go-ahead to start treating patients, which I think is kind of scary.”

Her project on immune cells in the microenvironment and metastatic cancer for Allegheny Health Network has not yet been flagged. Her pressing concern is if she’s seeing all the data pertaining to her studies.

“Even the word female is being flagged, so if I’m looking specifically for ovarian cancer, maybe I’m not seeing everything that I used to,” she said.

Smith, who plans to continue her work at Johns Hopkins in the fall, said researchers will need to rely on each other to get research funded and published moving forward.

“We wouldn’t be able to do it individually,” she said. “They’re trying to censor, but public health is everywhere, and public health is always