Kff Health News
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The sudden dismissal of the Trump administration of Sudden Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has emptied training programs across the country whose participants have strengthened the workforce of public health and premises that for decades hungry for resources.
The programs are designed to cultivate a new generation of public health leaders, many of which have worked at the CDC. It was far from his only goal. Local and state officials said that departures threatened to undermine the constant effort of the country to identify and control the infectious epidemics of disease.
CDC licensed employees helped prevent and respond to epidemics such as dengue and flu. They worked with local officials to quickly test viruses and ensure that tests in public health laboratories comply with federal regulations. Others have monitored potential cases of tuberculosis or have provided adolescent health education to prevent sexually transmitted infections, according to interviews with dismissed workers and local public health officials.
As a public health advisor to the CDC, Gaël Cruanes had worked in the New York health and mental hygiene department to detect cases of tuberculosis, a serious illness that spreads in the air and generally attacks lungs.
The Public Health Partner program is deploying recent graduates and other workers at the start of a career for two years. After starting his job in October, he said Cruane, he contacted immigrants and refugees newly arrived potentially at risk of spreading tuberculosis in the hope of bringing them into the city clinics for screening.
“It is purely for public security at the end of the day,” said Cruane. He and other trainees were dismissed in mid-February.
“It’s unacceptable,” he said.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Andrew Nixon, refused to comment. The White House and the CDC did not respond to requests for comments.
The rapid discounts of the Trump administration personnel in February targeted the probationary employees, many of whom have hired in the past two years, which are lacking in public service against layoffs. Administration on February 26 ordered federal agencies To submit plans in mid-March for large-scale layoffs, a decision that could include a much wider band of workers.
After CNN published this article, at least some CDC workers dismissed in training programs were informed on March 4 that their layoffs had been canceled.
The affected employees were authorized to work on March 5, according to emails consulted by Kff Health News. “You must return to service as part of your previous work schedule. We apologize for any disturbance that this could have caused, “said the emails, not signed and sent from an internal e-mail address of the CDC.
The reversal intervened less than a week after a federal judge judged that the generalized layoffs of the Trump administration of probationary employees were probably illegal.
Seven CDC employees – including the associated program – assigned to the New York Health Department were initially dismissed, said Michelle Morse, agency’s acting commissioner during a municipal council hearing on February 19.
In an interview, Morse said that the Health Department explored how to keep them.
“We examine what the CDC could do,” she said, “but we really try to use our own levers that we have in the health service to see what is possible for these staff members.”
Since its creation in 2007, the Public Health Partner program has placed 1,800 people in almost all states and territories, plus the District of Columbia, according to the CDC.
Sudden layoffs meant “there was no delay to try to understand what we are going to do,” said Anissa Davis, head of health of the City of the Department of Health and Social Services of Long Beach in California.
Three participants in the associate program worked in the Long Beach department, said Davis. A CDC public health advisor was one of the four employees working on sexually transmitted infections and HIV monitoring. Two others were with the transmitted disease control team of 13 people, who includes staff who react to epidemics in nursing homes, hospitals, restaurants and schools, said Davis.
“They are invaluable,” said Davis. “Public health is always underworld, so having these people really help us.”
The American public health system was already subject to strong pressure at the start of the COVVI-19 pandemic-tens of thousands of jobs disappeared after the 2007-2009 recession, and expenses also fell significantly for national and local health services, according to a Kff Health News Investigation. The backlash against the restrictions of the pandemic era led many more civil servants to resign or retire. Others have been dismissed. However, officials said the pandemic also inspired some to pursue public health careers.
Scientists of the CDC laboratory leadership service program were also dismissed in February. The CDC in 2015 began the two -year training scholarship to improve the safety and quality of the laboratory following a series of failures, especially in 2014 when CDC staff in Atlanta were potentially exposed to the Anthrax. The program each year recruits a small number of doctoral level scientists; Several work in state or premises health services.
At least 16 of the 24 stock markets in the program were dismissed in mid-February. “Now we can no longer be a resource for these laboratories,” said one of them.
Public health laboratories need CDC scientists “because they are sub-financed, in sub-efficient,” said the other. “They are already at their capacity.”
The responsibilities of the LAB Fellows have included the surveys and responses of epidemics, in particular by forming local personnel on how to carry out tests safely or analyze samples to identify the cause of a disease. Scholarship holders have recently been involved in the creation of a new test in Florida to detect oropouche, a disease transmitted by relatively unknown insects which has No effective vaccine or treatment. The World Health Organization in December said Over 11,600 cases had been reported in 2024 in South America, in the Caribbean, the United States, Europe, Canada and Panama. The Florida Ministry of Health has not responded to a request for comments.
Scholarship holders also helped to develop the ability to test dengue in the American Samoa, one of them said.
“When new things happen that are urgent, it is almost all the time that we rotate ourselves,” said the person.
Participants in various training programs received the same form of form informing them of their layoffs, according to the documents referred to by KFF Health News.
The letters said that dismissed persons had shown poor performance: “Unfortunately, the agency notes that you are not able to continue continuous employment because your capacities, knowledge and skills do not meet the current needs of the agency, and your performance was not sufficient to justify an additional job at the agency.”
However, stock market supervisors had written memos and emails saying that they were in good standing, according to documents visualized by Kff Health News. Cruanes said he had not had performance assessment when he was dismissed – his first was supposed to be on February 18, three days after receiving his opinion. He was one of the CDC staff reinstated on March 4.
In Minneapolis, a CDC public health advisor provided sexual and reproductive health education in two secondary schools, as well as city -scale work on STI tests, said Barbara Kyle, director of the city’s school clinic. The ministry was trying to move these responsibilities to the remaining staff. “We are currently rushing,” she said.
The city has relied on the trainees through the CDC program for more than a decade, Kyle said.
“These two years of learning public health, on experience in the field, have really been such a positive decision for our country,” she said. “So that concerns me if we lose this pipeline.”
Healthbeat journalist Eliza Fawcett contributed to this New York report.
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