Overview

• Researchers depend on competitive grants under a ‘soft money’ system to cover their salaries, which fuels burnout and diverts focus from impactful global health initiatives.
• Faculty interviews reveal that shifting donor priorities often force abrupt project shutdowns, weakening long-term collaborations with Global South institutions.
• Universities rely on overhead from soft money grants for financial stability, creating incentives to preserve control rather than redistribute funding.
• Authors Daniel Krugman and Alice Bayingana introduce ‘ruinous solidarity’ as a stance where institutions must accept potential institutional or personal losses for systemic change.
• The call for reform gains urgency as proposed cuts to US federal science budgets threaten to deepen inequities in global health research funding.