Federal cuts throw Seattle veterans health research into limbo

Traumatic brain injury. Addiction treatment. Approaches to heart surgeries.

These topics and more occupy minds daily at the Seattle VA Medical Center on Beacon Hill, where hundreds of researchers work to push medical and mental health care for veterans forward. 

The Puget Sound area has not been spared in the Trump administration’s recent moves to cut federal spending by firing thousands of government workers, including state Department of Health grant recipients and local Veterans Affairs staffers.

While patient medical services are at risk, researchers throughout the region are also bracing for hard hits: Hiring freezes and layoffs are stalling clinical trials, early career scientists are scrambling to fund new projects, and some longtime employees worry their life’s work could be shut down. 

Scientists here say a rapid succession of policy changes and later reversals have created a swirl of uncertainty and an atmosphere of chaos and fear.

“Things get announced and then rolled back and announced and then rolled back,” said one local researcher, who, like everyone else interviewed for this story, requested anonymity out of concern that speaking out could cause their research programs to be targeted. The researchers also limited the details they shared about their work, for fear those details could identify them.

In recent days, for example, the local researcher and others were told the VA had canceled a contract for an important clinical trials data management program. They also received a message, she said, to “As soon as possible, download all of your data. We don’t know when you’ll lose access.” 

“All over the country, everybody frantically drops what they’re doing, texts their friends that are on their day off, or out, you know, doing something else,” she said. “It felt astonishing. This was one of the ones that they rolled back the next morning after we all spent six hours frantically downloading everything and trying to print out paper copies and (saving) as much as we can.”

Emma Spaulding, spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement last week that the VA is “complying” with court blocks in Maryland and California lawsuits related to federal firings.

The department in early March extended contracts for all research employees whose terms were about to expire, allowing them to continue “mission-critical VA research efforts” for three more months while the agency further assesses the work, the statement said.

At the same time, Spaulding wrote, VA health care has been on the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s “high-risk list” for more than a decade — meaning the agency has long thought veterans health care needed cost-cutting improvements.

“Unfortunately, many in the media, government union bosses and some in Congress are fighting to keep in place the broken status quo,” Spaulding wrote.

“Despite major opposition from those who don’t want to change a thing at VA,” she wrote, “we will reform the department to make it work better for Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors.”

100 years of service

Medical research has been part of the VA’s mission for almost as long as the existence of military hospitals and veteran-specific clinical care. VA-sponsored studies date back to at least the 1920s, according to a book documenting the history of the agency’s research program, and included early studies on treatments for malaria and mental illness.

In the century since, the VA has led noteworthy research on pain, sleep, neurodegeneration, aging, diabetes, prosthetics and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other things.

Part of this work has included important “basic science” research — studies that probe the underlying causes of disease or help build foundational knowledge that could be used to develop treatments.

Agency researchers, for instance, are credited for developing concepts that led to the creation of the CT scan, identifying the gene that causes a premature aging condition called Werner’s syndrome and finding a gene that’s highly associated with schizophrenia. 

Although the exact scope of cuts to staffing and research funds isn’t yet clear — the Trump administration has threatened to downsize the agency by about 80,000 people — the VA’s long-standing research mission is on shaky ground, say researchers who work there.

Harborview Medical Center physician Dr. Stephan Fihn, with three other colleagues from around the country who are also former VA employees, highlighted the agency’s long history of medical and research innovation in a JAMA article last month. The “arbitrary and unselective” cuts could “permanently cripple the (U.S.) medical research enterprise,” they wrote.

In the Seattle area, VA Puget Sound oversees more than 750 active research projects, funded by 95 groups, including federal agencies like the VA Office of Research Development, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. In 2024, the VA reported 102 active research sites nationwide, with more than 7,000 projects.

VA researchers work closely with the University of Washington, the VA website says, including from departments spanning anesthesiology to urology. Work includes programs for Alzheimer’s research, substance-use treatment education, geriatric research and others, according to the VA site.

Researchers interviewed for this story worry major losses to science and medicine could happen quietly and under the radar of the general public. But the effects of the cuts could last generations.

“Saying you’ve cut veteran health care will get people more riled up than saying you’ve stopped doing research in an area,” said one local researcher. “One gets a bigger reaction. Even though both are going to actually cut patient care in the long run.”

“The uncertainty“

In the days after G learned the Department of Veterans Affairs planned to shed more than 80,000 jobs, she feared hers might be among them. The Seattle Times is using one of her initials instead of her full name to protect her from retribution. So she dug up the section of federal code that spells out the role of the VA, and what, if any, legal protections researchers like herself could point to.

“There is a part about VA clinical research, but nowhere does it mention basic science,” she said. “I’m not confident in the future of my research career, in the future of my lab, or really in the abilities for people in my lab to have jobs past the next six months or so.”

For several years G has worked on a VA research project that involves working with mouse models of disease. Her research is considered “translational science” — she doesn’t work directly with patients, but her lab drives findings that could eventually translate into practical treatments for veterans and others.

The VA is one of few institutions that supports this specific corner of scientific inquiry, she said. And the agency is naturally more collaborative and patient-focused than research universities or private industry, G added, which is one of the biggest reasons she’s stayed. 

“It is so much harder to ignore the human aspect of what you’re doing when you come to a VA campus every single day and walk the halls with people who you can see who are physically impacted by war,” she said. “People who work at the VA are just so much more tuned into (that) there are humans at the end of our research.”

She recently learned that although she has worked at the VA for a long time, she’s technically employed under a renewable two-year contract that expires this year. Research grants she’s won would cover her salary for at least a few more years. But the VA enacted a 90-day hiring freeze she worries could be extended, putting the future of her career at risk. 

She and her colleagues were initially told their jobs would be exempt. 

“Then a couple weeks later, it was like, nope, just kidding,” she said. They’re now all stuck waiting, hoping something will change as the calendar creeps closer and closer to their contract expiration dates. 

“What is happening to federal employees is a form of chronic, unpredictable, mild stress. What we are experiencing is going to have outcomes, regardless of if we get to keep our jobs or not, just because of the uncertainty. That’s literally an animal model of depression.”

“Shut out“

L thought she was doing everything right. 

She won a prestigious government-paid scholarship to complete a medical degree and doctorate, a highly specialized combination of training for people interested in bridging gaps between laboratory science and patient care. She completed four years of residency, then secured a fellowship at the VA, where she balanced new research projects with treating patients.

And in recent years, she’d started applying for bigger research grants in earnest, hopeful she’d secure enough funding to complete her first clinical trial, which involves predicting which treatments work best for people with PTSD.

Then came the Trump administration’s plans to slash jobs and undercut research projects across the VA and other government-funded research institutions. 

“I’m very stressed out and upset because I feel like it’s just horrible timing,” said L, who requested to use an initial instead of her full name out of concerns of retribution. “I’m having a hard time seeing a path forward.”

A hiring freeze meant she couldn’t transition into a full-time job once her fellowship ended at the end of September. She’s so dedicated to her research, though, that she’s been volunteering at the VA for about 20 hours a week to continue running her clinical trial. She’s the primary breadwinner in her family — her spouse recently lost his job — and took a job as a physician at a private clinic to subsidize her volunteer hours at the VA.  

But she can only volunteer her time for so long.

And being an early career researcher means she’s in a particularly precarious position. There are limited grant opportunities for researchers at the beginning of their careers. This fall, L is coming up on what might be her last chance to secure funding.

“If I don’t get funded in September, I am probably going to be forced to give up my research career altogether,” L said. “There’s going to be this huge generational gap in research where only the big fish survive … the little fish will not get a chance, because we’ll be shut out.”

“Down and dismal“

The last several weeks of VA firings have been a “nightmare,” one Seattle-area researcher said. 

She worries about the long-term sustainability of her research around rural health care for veterans, which has been funded through a federal grant for the last few years. The work has gotten good feedback so far.

“We were thinking about expanding to more people in our region, even nationally,” said the researcher, who asked to remain unnamed to protect her job.

Things have changed in the last few months. After a research analyst she works with was recently laid off, progress on parts of her work has stalled. The analyst had so many files and ways of accessing new data that there wasn’t time to hand everything off. 

“It’s been down and dismal for the last several weeks,” the researcher said. “It feels kind of hopeless.”

Although her research is still funded — the grant money has already been appropriated for this year, at least — she worries it won’t matter if the department continues to lose staffers. 

“There’s going to be a purge in research at the VA,” the researcher said. “This isn’t going to be something the public will see tomorrow. But five to 10 years from now? What happens when you can’t get primary care access now?”