By Andy Miller, healthbeat And Rebecca Grapevine, healthbeat, for Kff Health News
Disease control centers and prevention workers whose jobs have been reinstated after the disturbances of the dizzying Trump administration say they are stuck in budgetary, political and professional limbo.
Their work includes the main priorities of agencies such as tests and monitoring of HIV, as well as work at the Labor Sexual Infections Sexual Transmetted infection. And while employees are back, many projects have been canceled or blocked, as funding disappears or is delayed.
“For a while, work was looking at a virgin screen,” said a HIV scientist. “I had a few projects before that. I try to restart them. “
“We do not know what is going on or what to do,” said a HIV prevention researcher who was dismissed then rehired.
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These employees have expressed profound concern about the future of the agency and its work on HIV and other threats. The reduction in unprecedented staff could lead to loss of life and higher medical care expenses, they say. Their uncertain employment status has flowed morale. Many are concerned about the future of public health.
On August 8, a shooter identified by the Georgia authorities as being shot Patrick Joseph White on CDC buildings in Atlanta. First speaker on the scene, the police officer of the county of Dekalb, David Rose, was killed. White, who was found dead, was perhaps motivated by her opinions on vaccines, according to reports.
The attack added another level of anxiety for the workers of the agency.
“We feel threatened from the inside and, obviously, now from the outside,” said a laboratory scientist on August 10. “The trauma flows so differently in each of us. And is it the last straw for some of us? The general morale-would you return to the building and you could be shot?”
Healthbeat interviewed 11 CDC workers, who offered a rare overview of the agency’s conditions. All except one had been dismissed, then offered their jobs. Most have been working on HIV -related projects for at least several years. All spoke of the state of anonymity, citing a fear of reprisals.
They fear that their job, in terms of HIV, “on fragile field”.
“I fear that there is chaos and that we have lost ground on HIV prevention” of reducing data collection and dismissals of local public health workers, said an HIV epidemiologist. “I feel like a pawn on a failure.”
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard answered a question with this declaration:
“Under the leadership of secretary Kennedy, the country’s critical public health functions remain intact and effective. Major priority.
Workers received positive news on July 31, when a senatorial committee voted to maintain CDC funding at more than $ 9 billion, near its current level. “It is very encouraging, but it is only a step in the credits process,” the researcher told HIV.
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However, under the Budget Request for the Trump Administration, CDC programs on HIV face uncertainty. John Brooks, who retired as chief doctor of the HIV prevention division of the CDC last year, spoke at the end of the epidemic HIV initiative. Launched in President Donald Trump’s first term, he “inspired a new life to HIV prevention,” said Brooks.
The successes of the end of the HIV epidemic initiative are compromised by the administration plan to reduce HIV prevention efforts, Brooks said. This would include the potential elimination of the CDC division of HIV prevention, which provides funds to state health services and other groups for tests and prevention, conducts HIV monitoring and monitoring, seeks HIV prevention and care and helps health professionals for training and education.
“There is no way to achieve EHE’s objectives without maintaining the national prevention infrastructure on which it depends,” said Brooks. “There is every reason to worry that, in fact, new HIV infections will increase again.”
Subsecretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Ministry of Health and Social Services has carried out generalized layoffs at the CDC and other health agencies from early April. Prosecutions on these mass dismissals take place before the federal courts.
The budgetary plan of the administration would move the work of HIV in the CDC – with much fewer employees, according to People Healthbeat, to the administration for a healthy America, a new HHS Kennedy division defended.
The medical surveillance project, which follows the results, the quality and the gaps in the treatment of HIV, is defined at be a victim As part of Trump’s restructuring plan, HIV prevention doctor said.
HHS officials did not communicate with the rank and the file on the restructuring, said several CDC workers.
“It was crickets,” said the HIV scientist.
The CDC budget proposed by the White House for the next exercise contains a reduction of more than 50%, going from $ 9.2 billion during the financial year 2025 to around $ 4.2 billion, according to administrative documents and public health advocacy groups, with certain agency functions transferred to AHA proposed. The senatorial committee, by an overwhelming vote, has replaced billions in the agency’s budget and refused to finance the AHA.
American senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat in Georgia, thanked the committee for having “rejected the unacceptable effort to finance most CDC”.
“The demand for budget of the White House included a reduction of 56% to the pre -eminent epidemiological agency in the world,” said Ossoff. He also criticized a “systematic destruction of morale to CDC, the dissolution of whole agencies focused on maternal health and neonatal health and disease prevention at CDC”.
If the White House prevails and the prevention program is eliminated, “we would see that most states do not end with HIV prevention,” said Emily Schreiber, principal director of policies and legislative affairs for the national alliance of state directors and territorial AIDS. “This means that most states would not be able to carry out a HIV test, a reference to care and / or the reference to preventive services such as preparation”, or pre-exhibition prophylaxis, a drug that can prevent HIV infections.
“This means that states would not be able to help people access drugs,” she said, “and it means that we would see new cases and increased HIV distribution in the United States.”
“We would certainly see dismissals at the CDC, and I think we would probably also see them in state health services and community organizations,” she added.
The Los Angeles County Public Health Department recently dismissed or reassured dozens of HIV workers due to funding problems, according to a statement sent by email to Healthbeat.
“I fear that all HIV prevention work is constantly disappearing,” said the HIV prevention researcher. “I do not think that this administration wants the federal government to be carried out by the federal government.”
Georgia leads US states to the rate of new HIV infections, according to the latest data Aidsvu. CDC workers also said they feared that vulnerable colored communities and LGBTQ + communities are deeply injured by financing cuts.
In Georgia and in other states, the information provided by the medical supervision project on access to care will disappear, said the HIV doctor. Information on prevention and treatment will decrease for disadvantaged people, he said, including those who have problems with drug addiction or mental illness, transgender people and those who live in poverty.
“There is a lot of anger and sadness among people during the end of the project,” said the doctor. “Much of the enthusiasm has disappeared.”
An effective home test program for HIV plans to close this fall, said Patrick Sullivan, the Takemehome ensemble The main scientist of the project and professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. In his opinion canceling the financing of the project, the CDC said that he no longer had the staff to supervise him. Based at Emory, the project has delivered more than 900,000 free home test kits to people across the country via an easy -to -use website and integration with dating applications.
More than 100 HIV workers were among the more than 450 CDC staff, said the employees interviewed by Healthbeat. Some cities Media coverage, conference support and advocacy by patient groups and pharmaceutical companies for their reinstatement. “Congress members will beat for HIV,” said the epidemiologist.
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Several closely looked at a trial brought by 20 Democratic prosecutors, seeking to stop a Kennedy agency restructuring plan Announced in March. They also pay attention to a trial brought in California which questions layoffs.
Some people whose jobs have been restored have withdrawn or have passed to other work. “Some people do not trust, we will stay, so they leave,” said the HIV prevention researcher.
In the Laboratory of Sexually Transmitted Infections of the CDC in Atlanta, work has also slowed down due to narrowing staff and new supplies of supplies, said the laboratory scientist.
Restored laboratory workers focus on fields of high priority such as syphilis and gonorrhea while other diseases have been burned back, said the scientist, adding that “many of what we were doing was ahead of the next pathogen, and we have the impression that our time and our effort to do it are now limited.”
“We are all public health because we know what the mission is,” said the scientist. “We just want to do our job and protect the American public.
