{
  "abstract": "Abstract Objective To assess changes in the prevalence of diversity language in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in 2024-25.Design Retrospective longitudinal analysis.Setting United States.Sample 17 701 abstracts of research grants awarded by the NIH between 1 January 2024 and 20 June 2025.Main outcome measures Prevalence of diversity language in NIH awarded grants measured by month. A within grant analysis compared 2024 and 2025 versions of the same grants, and the net change in the number of words reflecting diversity language versus all words was calculated, using thousands of randomly sampled lists generated from the abstracts to provide control words.Results The rate of words reflecting diversity language decreased sharply between October and November 2024, from 11.11 to 5.42 words per 1000, a 51% relative decrease. The decrease persisted through 2025, with an overall relative decrease of 25% between January 2024 and June 2025. In a within grants analysis, among 1967 pairs of identical grants in 2024 that were non-competitively renewed in 2025, words reflecting diversity language comprised fewer than 1% of all words but accounted for about 10% of all deleted words between 2024 and 2025, with 8.28 words per 1000 deleted. This decrease was lower than that of all randomly sampled lists of control words.Conclusions Words reflecting diversity language have decreased across the abstracts of research grants awarded by the NIH.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Department of Health Services, Policy and Practice, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, RI, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Neil Mehta"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA",
        "Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA",
        "National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA"
      ],
      "name": "Anupam B Jena"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Changes in diversity language in National Institutes of Health grant awards: observational study",
  "uid": "24e6baa2-1e98-5f75-8b65-2b9f4f42aea9"
}