House Appropriations Committee Approves Defunding Discriminatory Nursing Program

Earlier this week, the House Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, a spending bill which included appropriations for various health and medicine-related programs.

One program that will not receive funding under the bill, however, is the Nursing Workforce Diversity (NWD) program.

A project of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NWD program awards funding to nursing education programs that engage in racially discriminatory practices.

In fact, the program was the subject of an extensive report by Do No Harm examining how various nursing programs funded under NWD use the federal dollars to support explicitly discriminatory initiatives.

As outlined in Do No Harm’s report, the program asks recipients to establish methods to increase the enrollment of “racial and ethnic minorities” and other “underrepresented” groups.

Recipient nursing education programs have obliged, prioritizing certain racial groups for educational opportunities or employing admissions strategies designed to increase racial diversity.

The defunding of the NWD program is tremendous news for would-be nurses who happen to be members of racial groups disfavored by the program’s objectives, as well as for patients everywhere.

That’s not all the appropriations bill defunded, however. 

The bill also prevents funding from going toward “drugs or surgery that alter bodily sex traits as interventions for gender dysphoria,” per the committee report.

The bill further directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct a long-term study on the effects of interventions, such as drugs and surgery, used for the purposes of child sex changes.