CDC fires undermine the public health activity far beyond Washington

Kff Health News
–

The sudden fire administration of the Centers for Disease Control and Employee Prevention decreased training programs throughout the country whose participants have strengthened the labor force of local public health that have been for decades. Starred by resources.

The programs are designed to cultivate a new generation of public health leaders, many of them continued to work at the CDC. This was far from his only purpose. Local and state officials have stated that departures threaten to undermine the nation’s constant effort to identify and control outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Finished CDC employees helped prevent and respond to outbreaks such as fever dengue and flu. They worked with local officials to quickly test viruses and to ensure that testing in public health laboratories complies with federal regulations. Others have monitored potential cases of tuberculosis or offered health education to adolescents to prevent sexually transmitted infections, according to interviews with fired workers and local public health officials.

As a CDC’s public health advisor, Gaël Cruanes worked at the New York Health and Mental Hygiene department to detect cases of tuberculosis, a serious disease that spreads through the air and usually attacks the lungs.

The associated public health program recently implements the graduates of the college and other early career workers for two years. After his job started in October, Cruanes said, he contacted new -sosian immigrants and refugees, potentially at risk of spreading TB in the hope of entering the city for screening.

“It is only for public safety at the end of the day,” said Cruanes. He and other students were fired in mid -February.

“It’s unconscious,” he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Health and Human Services, Andrew Nixon, refused to comment. The White House and CDC did not respond to the comment applications.

The fast reductions of the Trump administration staff in February have targeted test employees, many employees in the last two years, who do not have public service protection. The administration of February 26 Ordered federal agents To submit plans by mid -March for large -scale redundancies, a movement that could include a lot of much wider workers.

Seven employees of the CDC – including the associated program – allocated to the New York City Health Department, were ceased, Michelle Morse, the Agency’s interim commissioner, testified during an hearing of the Municipal Council on February 19.

In an interview, Morse said the health department explores how to keep them.

“We look at what CDC could do,” she said, “but we just try to use our own levers we have in the health department to see what is possible for that staff.”

Since its creation in 2007, the associated public health program has placed 1,800 people in almost every state and territory, plus the Colombia district, according to the CDC.

The sudden fires meant “there was no time to try to figure out what we will do,” said Anissa Davis, the city’s health officer at the Long Beach Human Department of Long Beach.

Three participants of the associated program worked at the Long Beach department, Davis said. A CDC public health advisor was one of the four employees working on sexually transmitted and HIV surveillance infections. Two others were with the control team of diseases transmissible by 13 people, who include the staff responding to outbreaks in older houses, hospitals, restaurants and schools, Davis said.

“I’m invaluable,” Davis said. “Public health is always underestimate, so these people really help us.”

The US Public Health System has already been under severe tension at the beginning of the Covid-19-thousand jobs have disappeared after hitting the 2007-09 recession, and the expenses have significantly decreased for local and local health departments, according to a Kff Health News Investigation. The achievement against restrictions in the Pandemic Age has led many more officials to resign or withdraw. Others were fired. However, officials said that the pandemia inspired some to pursue public health career.

The scientists in the CDC laboratory management program were also dismissed in February. The CDC in 2015 started the two -year training scholarship to improve the safety and quality of the laboratory following a series of failures, including in 2014, when the CDC staff in Atlanta was potentially exhibited at Anthrax. The program every year recruits a small number of scientists at doctoral level; More works in state or local health departments.

At least 16 out of 24 comrades in the program were dismissed in mid -February, according to two scientists who were completed and spoke to the condition of the fear of professional reprisals. “Now we can no longer be a resource for these laboratories,” said one of them.

Public health laboratories need CDC scientists “because they are underfinite, underestimated,” said the other. “They are already in their quality.”

Laboratory Fellows responsibilities included the help of investigations and outbreaks, including by training local staff on how to perform safe tests or to analyze evidence to identify the cause of a disease. Fellows has recently been involved in setting up a new test in Florida to detect Oropouche, a relatively unknown disease transmitted by insects, which had Without an effective vaccine or treatment. The World Health Organization in December said Over 11,600 cases It was reported in 2024 in South America, Caribbean, US, Europe, Canada and Panama. The Florida Health Department did not respond to a comment request.

Fellows also helped develop the dengue fever test capacity in the American Samoa, said one of them.

“When new things happen, it is urgent, it is almost all the time we pivot,” said the person.

The participants in different training programs received the same form of form that notified them of their terminations, according to the documents viewed by KFF Health News.

The letters said that the finished people have shown weak performances: “Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not suitable for a continuous job, because your ability, knowledge and skills do not match the current needs of the agency, and your performance has not been appropriate to justify additional employment to the Agency.”

However, the supervisors of the fellows wrote the memoirs and the emails saying that they are in good condition, according to the documents viewed by KFF Health News. Cruanes said he did not have a performance assessment when he was ceased – his first had to be on February 18, three days after receiving the notification.

In Minneapolis, a CDC public health adviser offered sexual and reproductive health education in two high schools, as well as working at the city testing, said Barbara Kyle, the manager of the city clinic. The department was trying to change these responsibilities to the remaining staff. “Now we are only just scared,” she said.

The city has been based on students through the CDC program for more than a decade, Kyle said.

“These two years of public health learning, soil experience, were really a positive move for our country,” she said. “So this is concerned if we lose that pipe.”

Healthbeat reporter Eliza Fawcett contributed to this report in New York.

Kff Health News It is a national news room that produces in -depth journalism about health problems and is one of the basic operating programs at Kff – Independent source for researching health, survey and journalism.