Text edited from an article in The Boston Guardian

(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian’s board.)

If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services he could pose serious funding and economic problems for the Longwood Medical Area (LMA).

Institutions in Longwood rely heavily on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But Kennedy has said he’ll redirect half of the agency’s budget to holistic health, and Trump is expected to propose steep cuts to its research budget.

The LMA makes Boston a hub of health-care innovation and comprises a sizeable part of the city’s economy.

If the NIH budget is cut, Longwood’s research capabilities would decrease. But the city could also suffer significant economic consequences.

“The LMA is one of the densest clusters of research activity in the nation, with more NIH awards for its research endeavors than other similar academic biomedical clusters in the U.S.,” said David Sweeney, the president and CEO of the Longwood Collective, a non-profit organization which maintains the area.

The LMA also receives the most NIH research funding per capita in the United States. Institutions in the LMA have collectively received $1.2 billion in NIH-funded research grants in 2024, according to the Longwood Collective. In 2023, they received $1.4 billion.

“Most NIH-funded Boston hospitals are located in the Longwood Medical Area, making it an epicenter of medical training, research, and health care,” the Boston Planning Department stated in its most recent annual report on NIH funding throughout the city. The LMA contains 21 hospitals.

NIH funding is important because it is cost-effective compared to other types of funding. “It has the highest cost reimbursable rate across all sponsor types,” a spokesperson for the Mass General Brigham hospitals said. “Most awards are for four or five fiscal years, which provides financial stability to people working on these grants.”

If NIH funding were cut, the spokesperson said, it would take about five years to notice a decline. As existing NIH grants ran out, researchers would need to apply for other funds, which might not be as lucrative or stable, and they might struggle to upkeep their current volume in research output.

That also suggests possible economic decline.

“This research funding plays a major role in supporting the innovation ecosystem in the state and its associated reputational, workforce, and business creation benefits,” the Longwood Collective stated in a 2020 economic impact report, citing spending by LMA employees, students, and institutions. “All of these activities form the economic ‘ripple effect’ of the activity occurring within the LMA.”

The news about Kennedy has already had economic effects in the state. The Boston Business Journal reported the other week that stock prices for such major Massachusetts life-science companies as Moderna, Biogen and Vertex Pharmaceuticals plummeted after his nomination.

Kennedy has said he plans to immediately replace 600 NIH employees, restructure the agency from 27 departments to 15, and commit half of its research funding towards “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health.” He has previously criticized the NIH for not funding research on whether and how vaccines impact autism.