The Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of tens of billions of dollars in grants has state and local health departments reeling.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
State and local officials said the move will make it even harder for them to continue to fight infectious disease outbreaks, fund substance use disorder support programs and address other concerns.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Departments are already operating on thin margins and need to balance sometimes competing public health priorities. Due to the loss, some health departments are already starting to cancel contracts and lay off scientists, epidemiologists and community health workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to stop work in its tracks that was really important for their communities,\u201d said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs at the National Association of County and City Health Officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWork to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in nursing homes, for example, or to be able to track measles cases … the work has to stop, and yet the needs in the community remain,\u201d Casalotti said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the funds, totaling $11.4 billion, were primarily used for COVID-19 response, including testing, vaccination and hiring community health workers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The federal government said it expects to recover the money starting 30 days after the termination notices were sent out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,\u201d the HHS said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The administration also canceled about $1 billion in grants awarded by COVID-19 relief legislation and allocated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But state and local health department leaders said the money was already in their hands. Even though the grants were initially authorized by COVID relief legislation, they were allowed to be used for non-COVID priorities, including responding to the measles outbreak in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stop-work notices began arriving late Monday night or early Tuesday morning and were effective immediately.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe end of the pandemic provides cause to terminate COVID related grants and cooperative agreements,\u201d one of the notices described to The Hill said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThese grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose; to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Manisha Juthani, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health, said the state stands to lose nearly $150 million for disease outbreak surveillance, newborn screenings and childhood immunizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ripple effects are profound,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Juthani said the state was using some of the funding to modernize their information systems to allow for electronic, real-time reporting of test results. Due to the cuts, providers will now have to fax results to the department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This is going to be a major dent in our ability \u2026 to be prepared for whatever new threat might come,\u201d Juthani said.<\/p>\n
The health grants were authorized and appropriated by Congress, and it\u2019s not clear the administration has the authority to unilaterally take the money back. Similar cancellations of grants across other parts of the government have led to lawsuits, and states said they were looking at their options.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump was elected and promised to make life cheaper, healthier and easier for people, but he\u2019s taking us backwards on all of those fronts,\u201d Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) said in a statement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to assess the full impacts and are in touch with the Attorney General\u2019s Office and the 49 other states facing similar challenges.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The grants were expected to bring nearly $100 million to Massachusetts over the next year, Healey said, which would have been distributed among local agencies and departments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, said the impact to cash-strapped smaller health departments will be even more devastating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It may not be in the millions, but these are really small health departments that have very few staff, very little capacity. And then if you hit those, then it starts to really impact their ability to respond,\u201d Huang said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dallas is in the process of building a new public health laboratory, Huang said, and had earmarked the grants to purchase testing equipment\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Congress, Democrats slammed the move as political and destructive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Washington state lost $160 million that had already been awarded to the state\u2019s health department, tribes and other organizations. The sudden termination will put at least 200 jobs at risk, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Senselessly ripping away this funding Congress provided will undermine our state\u2019s ability to protect families from infectious diseases like measles and bird flu and to help people get the mental health care and substance use treatment they need\u2014causing immediate harm for millions of real people and communities across America,” Murray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is another destructive move by an administration intent on breaking government with no discernible strategy or plan\u2014making our communities less safe in the process\u2014and it should be immediately reversed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of tens of billions of dollars in grants has state and local health departments reeling.\u00a0\u00a0 State and local officials said the move will make it even harder for them to continue to fight infectious disease outbreaks, fund substance use disorder support programs and address other concerns.\u00a0\u00a0 Departments are already operating on thin margins and need to balance sometimes competing public health priorities. Due to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}