Report Reveals HHS Has Spent Hundreds of Millions on DEI and Health Equity Initiatives Under Biden Administration

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has invested hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in supporting President Biden’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, according to a report by government watchdog nonprofit OpenTheBooks. This spending stems from Biden’s 2021 executive order, which instructed federal agencies to make DEI a priority in hiring, promotions, and operations, reports National review

The report reveals that HHS currently employs 294 DEI-focused employees at a yearly cost of $38.7 million, with 247 of those workers earning over $100,000 and four earning double that amount. Additionally, 207 HHS employees are dedicated to health equity efforts within the Offices of Minority Health, at a total salary cost of $29.4 million per year.

“At the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is organized like its own corporation,” OpenTheBooks noted. “It has separate departments for Guidance, Education & Marketing, Data Analytics & Customer Outreach, and an ostensibly redundant Diversity & Inclusion Division.”

The report highlights several programs within HHS that have attracted significant attention, including a $5 million initiative to “diversify the doula workforce” and a $25 million investment in “nursing workforce diversity.” Additionally, the Rural Communities Opioid Response program now requires grant applicants to include a “Disparate Impact Statement” explaining how systemic racism informs their strategy for addressing the opioid crisis. The program encourages deference to groups historically affected by inequities.

Another HHS program, the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST), provides grants to top universities to hire scientists from underrepresented backgrounds, with a focus on a candidate’s “commitment to diversity” alongside academic qualifications. The NIH Common Fund has pledged $241 million to the program over nine years. Similarly, the Health Resources and Services Administration allocated $102 million for “training for diversity,” part of which funds “Centers of Excellence” at health profession schools to promote recruitment, training, and retention of minority students and faculty.

The report also uncovered that “equity” appears 829 times in HHS’s 2025 congressional budget request, with 92 DEI employees directly reporting to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.

One CDC initiative cited by OpenTheBooks involved a “vaccine equity” campaign in Atlanta, Georgia, where 5,500 monkeypox vaccine doses were distributed to Black LGBTQ+ men as a tribute to the cultural contributions of Black queer communities. The program reportedly enlisted thousands of Black church leaders as “vaccine advocates and influencers,” though records of both this and other vaccine equity programs have been removed from the CDC’s website, according to the report.