How huge health funding cuts in Washington put lives at risk in communities across America

Americans are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy.Gone are specialists who were confronting a measles outbreak in Ohio, workers who drove a van to schools in North Carolina to offer vaccinations, and a program that provided free tests to sick people in Tennessee.State and local health departments responsible for invisible but critical work, such as inspecting restaurants, monitoring wastewater for new and harmful germs, responding to outbreaks before they get too big, and a host of other tasks to protect both individuals and communities, are being hollowed out.“Nobody wants to go swim in a community pool and come out of it with a rash or a disease from it.

Nobody wants to walk out their door and take a fresh breath of air and start wheezing,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.But local health officials say they now have no choice but to do a lot less of it.The Trump administration is cutting health spending on an unprecedented scale, experts say, including pulling $11 billion of direct federal support because the pandemic is over and eliminating 20,000 jobs at national health agencies that in part assist and support local public health work.

It’s proposing billions more be slashed.Together, public health leaders said, the cuts are reducing the entire system to a shadow of what it once was, threatening to undermine even routine work at a time when the nation faces the deadliest measles outbreak since at least the 1990s, rising whooping cough cases and the risk that bird flu could spread widely among people.The moves reflect a shift that Americans may not fully realize, away from the very idea of public health: doing the work that no individual can do alone to safeguard the population as a whole.That’s one of the most critical responsibilities of government, notes James Williams, county executive in Santa Clara County, California.

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