On April 1, the Trump administration carried out thousands of layoffs in the United States Health and Human Services (HHS) with no warning, ultimately attempting to restrict the size of health agencies. This included layoffs in the Iowa HHS. Many employees in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and other crucial health organizations received this devastating news and are now forced to look for other jobs.
These department cuts consist of important positions to HHS, including scientists, doctors, researchers and senior staff members. Employees at the CDC working in infectious disease centers have also become unemployed. CDC layoffs encompass departments focused on fighting outbreaks in other countries, labs focused on finding efficient solutions for HIV and Hepatitis and centers that are progressing towards eliminating tuberculosis. Now, many of the leaders equipped with institutional knowledge for efficient product development and for ensuring safety through disease prevention are unemployed.
Earlier this year the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, thus limiting interactions between the United States and other countries pertaining to health and safety measures. These layoffs are no exception to the regressive health policies in the nation. “Public health policy is really the backbone of our country and is already underfunded as it is, so with the recent cuts and layoffs, it’s extremely disparaging to those in the public health field,” said Sarah Chen, a public health major at the University of Iowa.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy writes, “Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs,” but said that the department needs to be “recalibrated” to “emphasize disease prevention.”
This recalibration Kennedy has promised, has dismantled federally-funded public health policy in place since 1939. These major layoffs are projected to have detrimental impacts on preexisting health crises, such as the ongoing measles outbreak. Kennedy’s emphasis on disease prevention amid a large decrease in public health workers would restrict collaborations between local and national governments.
It’s important these centers remain interconnected to best respond to national emergencies and prevent deaths. “A large focus of public health is prevention and tackling issues before they arise,” Chen added. “This will be extremely difficult as our public health workforce shrinks and priorities shift. Also, with FEMA and CDC cuts, there’ll be a weakened responses to disasters in the US especially in those states more prone to large-scale natural disasters. Overall, there will be an increase in preventable causes of death like vaccine-preventable diseases.”
These layoffs, while not drastic at the centers for medicare and Medicaid Services, greatly affected much of the workforce of the Office of Minority Health. This division is in place solely to provide equitable healthcare access to racial and ethnic minority populations in the nation. With these cuts, vulnerable populations are no longer promised adequate healthcare. “There will be a declining quality in all parts of healthcare,” senior Victoria Rice said. “It will be even more dangerous to be a women or a person of color trying to get adequate healthcare.”
Reducing the workforce of the HHS decreases the efficacy of a public health response from the nation, which is crucial both in the nation and for the world as well. Not only does public health ensure a better quality of life, but it also takes preventative measures to keep disease from spreading and maintains the wellbeing of vulnerable communities.
Along with health divisions, these cuts impact environmental agencies as well. “Public health focuses largely on the environment and climate change,” Chen added. “I think that with the severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, we will see weakened air and water quality protection.”
Dismantling divisions, such as disease prevention in the CDC, can result in the possibility of an unprepared nation in the face of a global health crisis. The reemergence of widespread diseases such as the Avian flu and monkeypox is now more probable.
With these layoffs, the nation will have to restructure how it responds to disease and outbreaks and reevaluate how it cares for vulnerable populations. Public health is a globalized health initiative, which is something the United States moves further away from.
