In my first job interview after getting a Masters in Public Health and completing Peace Corps service, the interviewer said: “We sure don’t get into Public Health for the money!”
We all laughed, assured that our salaries were far too small to be on a budget chopping block.
During Donald’s first term, he put a hiring freeze on CDC, ostracized the WHO, and set us up for failure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to decades of taxpayer funded research into vaccines and a change in administration, we had the power to combat the pandemic and to save lives when I joined CDC in 2021.
Over 4 years with CDC, I worked on COVID-19, TB, Mpox, and HIV. It feels like all of that work, and the progress that was made, has been burned to the ground since January 2025.
On April 1, 2025 – April Fools’ Day (I guess we were fools for believing this would all be okay) – I received my Reduction in Force notice. My whole HIV prevention branch, my boss and my boss’s boss, and a large number of health communicators were impacted.
This has all been in the name of “government efficiency” – what a joke. Our federal salaries and lifesaving programs are a drop in the ocean of the federal budget. Public Health is already very effective at saving taxpayer dollars! “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – meaning, $1 invested in Public Health yields improved health outcomes equivalent to as much as $88 saved in healthcare costs. A few stats:
- 0.17% – In FY 2024, the total CDC budget was 0.17% of the federal budget (proposed to be cut in half for FY 2026)
- 5% – All federal workers’ salaries represent less than 5% of federal spending
- 50% of federal workers make between $50,000 and $110,000 a year
- 75% of the proposed FY 2026 budget is for military and police
These cuts to public health and healthcare will kill people and will be felt for generations to come.
So why would they target health communicators at CDC? I have two theories – one is that they don’t respect verified health information. The “do your own research” crew can just use Facebook to find justification for their own beliefs. We were tasked with digesting complex health research and boiling those down to actionable and easy-to-understand messages for the general public and healthcare providers. Those people are now gone, leaving millions without evidence-based health information.
My second theory is that they actively prefer to have an uninformed and misinformed voter base. If no one communicates health information and statistics, they can continue to lie about our civic duty to protect each other from disease. The ongoing measles outbreak and lack of government response is a perfect example.
Thanks to checks and balances, a federal judge has indefinitely paused the sweeping overhaul of the federal government. Due to the work of labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and local governments, the administration must now either roll back these changes or seek another opinion from a different court. This is great news for us, but damage to the public trust of government institutions is already done.
The fight for public health and health equity will be a lifelong one. But for the next few years, we can look to our families, our communities, and our cities to help us stay healthy. We should not waver in the demand for safe and healthy communities as well as for evidence-based health information. Love each other, protect each other, and get vaccinated!
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