The grand plan was announced this month by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency. As part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH doles out north of $31 billion annually to hundreds of thousands of researchers at thousands of universities and institutions around the globe.

Last year the NIH sanctioned a study that determined blacks who apply for federal research grants are less likely than whites and Hispanics to receive the awards. The study took years and was conducted to “learn more about the challenges facing the scientific community,” according to the NIH’s director, and to improve the diversity of its biomedical research workforce. He called the findings “disturbing and disheartening.” 

That’s because from 2000 to 2006, black researchers who applied for NIH grants were 10% less likely than whites to get the awards, according to the study, which is among the few to focus solely on the racial and ethnic composition of federal research funding applicants. Of additional concern is the low number of “non-white applicants” who apply for the public grants in the first place, the study found.

Researchers from the government-funded team of esteemed academics that conducted the minority probe think this is why; “the quality of educational and mentoring experiences may differ for applicants who self-identify as black or African-American.” In short, the NIH has admitted that it is guilty of not equally benefitting “all racial and ethnic groups.”

To right this wrong the NIH has created a 10-year plan that will dedicate $50 million annually to support hundreds of minority students with scholarships, research experiences and even graduate loan repayment. The agency will also create a new committee that makes “diversity a core consideration of NIH governance” and ensures fairness in the peer review system that erases “unconscious bias related to disparities in research awards.” The plan also implements “implicit bias and diversity awareness training.”

This is the same agency that recently gave an Ivy League university professor more than $2 million to promote condom use among injecting drug addicts in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet socialist republic that serves as a main route for Russia and Europe-bound narcotics, and $823,200 for an equally questionable project that teaches uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex to help curb the spread of AIDS. Just a few enraging examples of what the government is doing with your tax dollars.

To assure that the app is topnotch, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering entrepreneurs money to create it by launching a contest called Reducing Cancer Among Women of Color App Challenge. The winner gets $85,000, second place gets $10,000 and third place $5,000. That means American taxpayers will dole out 100 grand for this project, the latest of many launched by the administration to narrow the gap in health disparities between minorities and whites.

In fact, the Obama HHS claims the app challenge is a first-of-its-kind effort to address health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities. Although the apps will be available to women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, the agency says it’s particularly focused on reaching women of color. That’s because widespread disparities in care for minority and underserved women have led to higher prevalence and mortality rates among those groups, according to the agency.

“This app challenge is an example of our work to reduce health disparities, building on the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities,” according to a top HHS who serves as deputy assistant secretary for minority health. “By providing the right information at the right time, mobile apps can help minority and underserved women make informed decisions about their own health and benefit from the recommended preventive services provided at no cost under the health care law,” the minority health guru added.

This is consistent with the administration’s ongoing—and costly—efforts to single out healthcare inequalities between ethnic minorities and their more affluent and educated white counterparts. In fact, an Obamacare initiative to “reduce racial and ethnic health disparities” established half a dozen federal Offices of Minority Health as well as one for each state. Their mission is to help minorities obtain the same topnotch healthcare the president claims is the norm among whites.

The administration has also dedicated more than $100 million help lower chronic diseases—such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease—“disproportionately seen among poor and minority populations.” Part of that effort includes eliminating “food deserts” in urban areas. The term was coined by First Lady Michelle Obama to describe poor areas she claims don’t have access to affordable healthy fare such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat milk. American taxpayers are also financing the costly transformation of the inner city diet.

As part of these minority health initiatives the administration has created a variety of programs, including a new federal task force to “reduce racial and ethnic asthma disparities” and a special State Obesity Map that reveals blacks, the poor and uneducated are disproportionately obese compared to  more affluent Caucasian. This is critical for minorities because obesity-related conditions can be deadly and include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency that created the map.

To really drive home the point, the administration even created, for the first time ever, a new section on socioeconomic status in the CDC’s annual comprehensive report on Americans’ health. Nearly two dozen pages are dedicated to the special socioeconomic status section, which includes charts and graphs comparing the difference in the healthcare received by whites, Hispanics, blacks and Asians. Practically all ailments are mentioned, including asthma, obesity, mental disorders and dental visits with a breakdown of disparities among ethnic minorities and the uneducated and poverty-stricken.

Everything from depression to edentulism (lack of natural teeth), obesity, cigarette smoking and cancer is more prevalent among the poor, according to the government’s assessment. Even childhood attention deficit disorder hits low-income minorities harder and practically every chronic disease known to man strikes them at much greater rates than educated whites. In short, people with higher education and income levels have lower rates of many chronic diseases compared to those with less education and lower income levels, the feds assert.

The idea is to give the groups the necessary resources to improve security and make them less susceptible to an attack. The DHS calls it “target hardening activities” and the official program is known as Urban Areas Security Initiative, specifically the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

A total of 269 nonprofits across the U.S., all considered high-threat, high-density urban areas, will split the cash and the money will be used for security-related training and to install physical security equipment. The goal is to help them prevent, respond and recover from acts of terrorism.

But a look at the long list of recipients raises questions about how the money is allocated for this particular cause. While the majority of the grants went to Jewish centers and groups that could feasibly be targeted by radical Islamic terrorists, some are private medical facilities, catholic groups and a profitable Baptist hospital. In California and New York Planned Parenthood abortion clinics got the target hardening grants.

In Maryland, the Islamic Society of Baltimore got a target hardening grant as well as an interfaith center that includes a Roman Catholic church and a Methodist/Presbyterian church. All 30 of the grants distributed in Illinois went to Chicago-area nonprofits, including a politically-connected college foundation with more than $5 million in assets and several Catholic hospitals.

Funds are allocated based on risk analysis, effectiveness and integration with broader state and local preparedness efforts, according to the DHS. To be considered, nonprofits must demonstrate that they are at high risk of a terrorist attack and located within one of the specific eligible urban areas. How exactly does a group do this?

The government has a formula that includes the following: Identification and substantiation (e.g., police reports or insurance claims) of prior threats or attacks against the nonprofit or closely related group by a terrorist organization, network, or cell ;  symbolic value of the site as a highly recognized national or historical institution that renders it as a possible target of terrorism; role of the applicant nonprofit organization in responding to or recovering from terrorist attacks; findings from previously conducted risk assessments including threat or vulnerability.

Hundreds of thousands of foster children across the nation are being prescribed powerful psychiatric medications at doses that exceed the maximum levels approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), yet the feds are doing little to shield them. Within that number there is a subgroup that’s taking five or more psychiatric drugs simultaneously despite potential safety issues. In some cases the drugs aren’t even approved for this type of use the FDA, the federal agency charged with protecting public health by assuring the safety of medications and food.

The alarming details of the government’s failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens are featured in a federal report issued this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. It outlines the results of a two-year probe featuring five states—Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas. Of the approximately 100,000 foster kids studied, investigators found that nearly one-third were prescribed at least one psychiatric drug. Investigators also determined that foster children are almost five times more likely to take psychotropic drugs than kids who aren’t in the system.

Foster children less than a year old were nearly twice as likely to be on psychiatric drugs compared to non-foster kids, investigators found. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is being blamed for the crisis since it oversees Medicaid, which provides prescription drug coverage for foster children and has the power to withhold federal money from states that fail to comply with stricter rules.

While little kids are getting doped up by the government on potent psych drugs, HHS simply offers “informational resources for states to consider” for children in their custody with no follow-up or oversight. “HHS-endorsed guidance could help close gaps in oversight of psychotropic prescriptions and increase protections for these vulnerable children,” congressional investigators say in their report.

Ironically, the Obama Administration has put the bloated federal government stamp on other issues that don’t require it. For instance, under Michelle Obama’s multi-billion dollar law (The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act) various federal agencies—including HHS—have joined forces to control what children eat as well as their exercise habits. Passed by Congress last year, the measure especially targets poor and “at-risk” kids.   

As part of that effort, the government actually wasted $2 million this year on a device that tracks what minority public children eat for lunch. The goal of that brilliant project is to calculate how many lunchtime calories poor and minority kids consume at five Texas elementary schools. High-tech cameras were installed in the cafeteria of one San Antonio campus to photograph the foods students put on their trays. The digital imaging later determines how many calories were consumed.

The allocation is the perfect complement to the tens of millions of dollars already doled out by another brilliant Obamacare agency—Office of Minority Health—to reduce health disparities between that “underserved” population and whites in the U.S. Under that initiative the administration has dedicated north of $100 million in the last year to “empower” poor, minority communities with the resources to make residents healthier.

Announced this week, the innovation grants will go to those who promise to implement “compelling new ideas to deliver better health, improved care and lower costs” to recipients of government-funded programs for the elderly and poor. Community organizations, healthcare providers and local governments will each get between $1 million and $30 million to get the job done, according to the Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS), which distributes the cash.  

The allocation comes days after a group Senate Finance Committee members called for an investigation of Obama’s year-old Medicare and Medicaid innovation center, which debuted last year with a $10 billion budget under the president’s healthcare law. The agency’s mission is to test new ideas that could improve healthcare quality while also cutting costs. In the end, it will improve the healthcare system for the entire nation, the administration asserts.

But some lawmakers are skeptical and have called for a congressional investigation to determine the innovation center’s fiscal impact on the nation’s healthcare entitlement programs and what, if anything, it has accomplished so far. In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius three senators express their concern that, “at a time of significant uncertainty for the fiscal health of the U.S. government,” funds are being expended by the innovation center with “little to no actual value provided.”  

Following this week’s billion-dollar grant announcement one of the senators, Utah’s Orrin Hatch, blasted the agency for trying to save money by spending more money at a time when the nation is broke. “Another billion dollar government program won’t fix the President’s broken promise that his $2.6 trillion health law would lower health care costs,” Hatch said in a statement posted on his U.S. Senate website.

This would ban the sort of biomedical research that has helped produce life-saving vaccines for diseases such as Hepatitis B. Chimps are also essential in AIDs research and the hope of developing an elusive vaccine against the deadlier Hepatitis C, an infectious viral disease that leads to swelling of the liver and plagues tens of millions of people worldwide.

The reason chimps are so valuable to medical researchers is that they share many similarities to humans, including more than 98% of the genetic code. In fact, chimps are the only known animal other than humans that can become infected with AIDS, the lethal virus that destroys the immune system.

Outlawing research with chimps would threaten human lives, according to the medical director of a top nonprofit center in Texas that’s well known in the scientific community for its efforts to improve health, save lives and advance knowledge of human diseases. Chimp research helps topnotch scientists find cures and ultimately eradicate disease, according to the center’s website.

But a consortium of influential animal rights groups delivered a lengthy petition last spring demanding the government upgrade captive chimpanzees from threatened to endangered status which would ban scientists from using the approximately 1,000 chimps available for biological and behavioral studies in the U.S. The petition also asks that chimps be barred from the entertainment industry and forbidden from being kept in private zoos or as personal pets.

Why? Because the chimpanzee is an “imperiled species” that’s being exploited, according to the animal rights groups. One of the nation’s largest mainstream newspapers went so far as to write that, to many people, chimps “look like relatives behind bars.” To keep the phrase in context, here is the entire paragraph of the story published in the New York Times this week:  “Chimps’ similarity to humans makes them valuable for research, and at the same time inspires intense sympathy. To research scientists, they may look like the best chance to cure terrible diseases. But to many other people, they look like relatives behind bars.”

The Obama Administration is taking this seriously and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering classifying all chimps—wild or captive—endangered by sometime next year. In an announcement published in the Federal Register, the agency announces that it’s accepting public comments on the matter until the end of January.

The measure (Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act) is necessary because, without an adequate supply of diapers, a child cannot attend day care and therefore “working mothers have a harder time getting work and can fall even further behind.” This is how the veteran congresswoman from Connecticut, Democrat Rosa DeLauro, justifies her brilliant bill. DeLauro is a ranking member of the House Labor, Health, Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the government’s investments in those areas.

Combined with more than two decades in the U.S. House, that means DeLauro is influential and can probably gather lots of support for her measure. Before getting elected to represent Connecticut’s Third District, which stretches from the Long Island Sound and New Haven to the Naugatuck Valley and Waterbury, DeLauro was the chief of staff to Christopher Dodd, the famously corrupt U.S. Senator embroiled in the Countrywide Financial scandal.

Providing free taxpayer-funded diapers will also avoid a health crisis, according to DeLauro. She asserts that infrequent diaper changes can lead to diaper rash, increased risk of urinary tract and skin infections, and can even cause outbreaks of viral meningitis, dysentery, and Hepatitis A. Her bill will help relieve some of the stress on families facing hardship in this economy by allowing diapers to be provided as a direct service, she says.

 “No family should have to choose between buying diapers for their child or buying groceries—but that is exactly what is happening today,” said DeLauro who considers her successful campaign to stop U.S. military aid to Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s among her biggest accomplishments. “Diapers are expensive, but necessary to keep children healthy in daycare, giving their parents the freedom they need to work.”

To demonstrate support for the proposed law, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy has declared a “Diaper Needs Awareness Day” this week. Diaper “activists and advocates” will gather in New Haven for an important panel discussion on diapers as a public health and pressing social issue, according to a local news report. Various state lawmakers and an esteemed Ivy League psychology professor will participate in the diaper discussion.  

In fact, moving to “low-poverty neighborhoods” actually decreases the risk of obesity and diabetes for poor people, say the droves of scientists and academics who conducted the in-depth study for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  This proves that concentrated poverty is, not only bad policy, it’s bad for your health, according to Obama’s HUD secretary, Shaun Donovan.

“Far too often we can predict a family’s overall health, even their life expectancy, by knowing their zip code,” Donovan said in a statement announcing the results of the years-long project. “But it’s not enough to simply move families into different neighborhoods.  We must continue to look for innovative and strategic ways to connect families to the necessary supports they need to break the cycle of poverty that can quite literally make them sick.”

Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary (Kathleen Sebelius) also weighed in, pointing out that “where you live can be critical to your health” and stressing that families need quality housing and access to “healthy and affordable foods to promote better health and wellness.” That last line clearly refers to Michelle Obama’s multi-million-dollar plan to eliminate so-called “food deserts,” inner-city neighborhoods low on fresh produce, lean meats and other healthy cuisine.  

This particular study focused on families living in government-subsidized public housing projects in major cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The Obama Administration got the Massachusetts Medical Society’s influential periodical (New England Journal of Medicine) to publish the entire study which took years to complete. In all, 4,500 “very low-income” families were analyzed to determine the impact of “housing mobility” on obesity and diabetes.  

Unequivocally, giving very poor families the opportunity to move to better neighborhoods can have a positive impact on physical health, researchers found. As an example, the study says that women who were given vouchers by the government to relocate to “low-poverty neighborhoods” showed a “significantly reduced rate of extreme obesity” than the women who did not receive the vouchers. Likewise, the prevalence rate for diabetes was also much higher for women who were not relocated to better neighborhoods by Uncle Sam.  

After sorting through the compelling anecdotes and statistics offered in this latest taxpayer-funded enterprise, the bottom line is quite clear: The Obama Administration is using it to justify the creation of yet another entitlement program, which undoubtedly will end up costing taxpayers a big chunk of change.