The past year has presented immense challenges that have led to stress and anxiety for many in the Harvard Medical School community, including a freeze on $2 billion in federal grants to Harvard University.
Yet the institution will find a way to survive the current situation, carry on, and stay focused on its mission of promoting health and well-being for all, said HMS Dean George Q. Daley in his annual State of the School Address on Sept. 17.
Addressing the gathered crowd in the newly renamed Veritas Science Center with a balance of realism and optimism, Daley provided glimpses of hope in the form of successes that have come despite overarching uncertainty.
“I can promise this: The current crisis will not be our undoing, and through it all I remain optimistic about our future prospects,” he said.
“I am confident that we will find ways to thrive. And I am confident because all of you are so remarkably dedicated, resourceful, and resilient.”
Disease knows no politics
The consequences of the federal government’s actions this year have been significant, Daley reported. In addition to the grant terminations, Harvard is facing an increase in its endowment tax; a reduction in reimbursement for indirect research costs; investigations into its patents, admissions processes, and international collaborations; and continued disruption to the status of international students and scholars. These come on top of continuing trends of growing skepticism of long-standing public health practices and escalating frustration about rising health care costs, he said.
“These ingredients, and more, have been simmering for several years now — but in the last year, they’ve boiled over,” Daley added, as he acknowledged the significant toll recent developments have taken on members of the HMS community.
“It pains me to witness the anxiety and frustration that I know so many of you have been enduring,” he said. “Please believe me when I say I am with you. We are in this together.”
The termination of some 350 federal research grants at HMS threatens scientists’ ability to make research discoveries that will improve understanding of human health and form the basis of new, lifesaving therapies.
Yet federal funding is what has enabled many of the most pivotal breakthroughs at HMS, Daley noted, including cancer immunotherapies, drugs for diabetes and obesity, cures for genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia, and fundamental insights into human physiology.
“Our grant cancellations have definitely left critical basic science research hanging in the balance — the kind of research that is the antecedent of transformative therapies that many people today take for granted,” Daley said.
On Sept. 3, a federal judge ruled that the government had broken the law by freezing the grants. Some researchers have since received notices of grant reinstatements, but it remains unclear if and when funding will be restored.
Borrowing a line from Elias Zerhouni, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, Daley emphasized that disease knows no politics. In practice, he said, this means that cuts to research programs at Harvard and across the country have far-reaching effects.
“No matter who you are, no matter what your values or your political orientation, we are all at the mercy of our own biology,” Daley said.
A challenging financial future
Daley went on to explain how HMS is working to respond proactively and thoughtfully to a difficult financial situation exacerbated by certain federal policies.
He noted that federal funding represents 75 percent of the School’s research funding and 30 percent of its annual revenue — and that even before the grant terminations, HMS was already operating at a deficit.
“We have the responsibility, especially under these new circumstances, to right-size our research, education, and administrative enterprise so that our expenses do not continue to outpace our revenues,” which necessitates reducing the size and scope of work at HMS, Daley said.
He thanked School leaders, department chairs, and administrators for carefully managing costs through actions such as reducing discretionary and research spending, deferring capital projects, and heeding pauses on hiring and merit increases.
For the current fiscal year, Daley explained, HMS put in place a stopgap measure composed of rescue funding from the University and matching funds from HMS to partially offset the loss of federal funding. This temporary funding helps support MD-PhD students, junior faculty, and other aspects of research at HMS. Longer term, Daley emphasized, HMS must reduce operating costs and become less reliant on federal funding.
“In short, we must plan for a future where federal sponsorship of research will be leaner,” he said.
He reinforced that HMS can’t use its endowment to make up the difference, since much of the endowment is restricted to specific uses and the available portion would be depleted within a few years. Instead, he said, everyone in the community must work creatively and collaboratively to come up with new ways to keep HMS at the cutting edge of biomedical discovery.
“To ready ourselves for a very different future, we must challenge every assumption we have — including the assumption that we, as individuals, are powerless,” he said. “I want to say, each of you has a very important role to play.”
