New York – The motto of the secretary in the United States Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ” Make America healthyBut government cuts could make it more difficult to know if it happens.
More than a dozen data collection programs that follow deaths and diseases seem to have been eliminated in the Tornado of Local Releases and offered budget cuts deployed in the Trump administration in the Trump administration First 100 days.
The Associated Press examined the project budget and final budget proposals and spoke to more than a dozen current and old federal employees to determine the scope of programs according to the basic facts on the health of the Americans.
Among those who end in the centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were experts who follow abortions, pregnancies, work -related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence and smoking, revealed the AP.
“If you do not have staff, the program has disappeared,” said Patrick Breysse, who is used to supervising the CDC environmental health programs.
Federal officials have not given public accounting of specific surveillance programs that are eliminated.
Instead, a spokesperson for the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services highlighted the AP to a Trump administration project published on Friday. It lacked details, but proposed to reduce the basic budget of the CDC by more than half and promises to concentrate CDC surveillance only on emerging and infectious diseases.
Kennedy said that some of the other CDC works will be moved to an agency still to be created, the Administration for a healthy America. He also said that the cuts are designed to get rid of waste in a department that has seen its budget increase in recent years.
“Unfortunately, these expenses and additional staff have not improved the health of our country as a country” Kennedy wrote last month in the New York Post. “Instead, he has no longer created waste, administrative bloating and duplication.”
However, some health experts say that the programs eliminated are not duplicate, and erase them will leave the Americans in the dark.
“If the United States is interested in making himself healthier, how will he know if it cancels the programs that help us understand these diseases?” said Graham Mooney, a public health historian at Johns Hopkins University.
The heart of the country's health surveillance is carried out by CDCs National Center for Health Statistics. Based on birth and death certificates, it generates information on birth rates, death trends and life expectancy. It also operates long -standing health surveys that provide basic data on obesity, asthma and other health problems.
The center was barely affected in layoffs and seems intact in the context of current budgetary plans.
But many other efforts have been targeted by the cuts, the AP noted. Some examples:
THE Pregnancy risk assessment systemWho is investigating women across the country, has lost all of its staff – about 20 people.
It is the most complete collection of data on behavior and health results before, during and after childbirth. Researchers used its data to study the country maternal mortality issue.
Recent layoffs have also erased the workforce collecting data on fertilizations and in vitro abortions.
These cuts are particularly surprising since President Donald Trump said he wants to develop Access to IVF and the heritage foundation 2025 project Playbook for his administration called for more monitoring of abortion.
The CDC has eliminated its program on lead poisoning in children, who helped local health services – by financing and expertise – investigate leads in lead poisoning and to find where the risk is the largest.
Lead poisoning in children usually stems from exposure to pieces of old paint, contaminated dust or drinking water that goes through lead pipes. But the program staff also played an important role in the survey of Lead compote compote This affected 500 children.
Last year, Milwaukee health officials realized that peeling painting in aging local elementary schools endangering children. The city's health service began working with the CDC to test tens of thousands of students. This aid stopped last month when the staff of the CDC main program was terminated.
City officials are particularly concerned about loss of expertise to help them follow the long -term effects.
“We don't know what we don't know,” said Mike Totoraitis, the city's health commissioner.
23 -year -old staff also left Environmental public health monitoring programwhich had information on concerns, including possible cancer clusters and weather -related diseases.
“The loss of this program will considerably decrease the ability to make links between what could be in the environment and health that could be affected by this,” said Breysse.
In some cases, it is not a question of starting staff, but rather the end of specific types of data collection.
Transgender status is no longer registered in health monitoring systems, including those focused on violent deaths and risky behavior of children.
Experts know that transgender people are more likely to be victims of violence, but now “it will be much more difficult to quantify to what extent they are more at risk,” said Thomas Simon, recently retired principal director of scientific programs to the Division of the Prevention of Violence of the CDC.
Staff and financing seem to have remained intact for a collection of CDC data which gives an overview of homicides, suicides and accidental deaths involving weapons.
But the CDC violence prevention programs that acted on this information was interrupted. The same goes for work on a system that collects hospital data on non -deadly injuries from causes such as shots, accidents and drownings.
Apparently CDC National Incident Andements and Sexual Violence Survey. The system is designed to retrieve information that is not found in the statistics of the police. Health officials see that work is as important, because not all victims of sexual violence go to the police.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which follows illnesses and death -related deaths and makes recommendations on how to prevent them, was emptied by cuts.
Kennedy said 20% of dismissed persons could be restored while the agency tries to correct errors.
This seemed to occur last month, when the American Federation of Government employees said that Niosh workers involved in a black pulmonary disease program for coal miners had been temporarily recalled.
But HHS officials did not answer questions about reinstatement. AFGE Niemeier-Walsh Niemeier-Walsh Micah later said that the workers had continued to have dismissal dates in June and “we are concerned about what is to give the impression that the programs are still working, when they are not.”
There has been no discussion on the recovery of certain other Niosh programs, including one focused on the workplace in the oil and gas industries or a research project on the loss of hearing loss in this industry.
HHS Cups eliminated The team of 17 members responsible for the national survey on drug use and health, one of the main ways of which the government measures the consumption of drugs.
CDC staff also worked on the National tobacco survey.
There are other surveys that examine smoking and drug use for young people, including “monitoring of the University of Michigan,” monitoring the future ” School survey.
But federal studies have examined both adults and adolescents, and provided information on the consumption of drugs by dropouts in high school. The CDC has also plunged into specific vaping and tobacco products in the way other surveys do not, and was driver in the federal thrust to better regulate electronic cigarettes.
“There was overlapping among the surveys, but everyone had their own specific objective that the others did not cover,” said Richard Mich, who heads Michigan's study.
The work to modernize data collection has been derailed. This includes an upgrade to a 22 -year -old system that helps local public health services follow diseases and allows the CDC to set up a national image.
Another victim was the Center for epidemic forecasts and analyzeswho tries to predict the trends in the disease.
The center, created during the COVID-19 pandemic, worked on the forecast of the current multi-state measles epidemic. This forecast was not partly published because of the layoffs, according to two CDC officials who spoke under the cover of anonymity because they are not allowed to discuss it and to fear the remuneration to have pronounced the press.
Trump has not always supported generalized tests of health problems.
In the spring of 2020, when COVVI-19 diagnoses exploded, the president grouped that the nation's ability to do more tests made the United States look worse than other countries. He called the tests “a double -edged sword”.
Mooney, the historian of Johns Hopkins, wonders how interested the new administration is to account for health problems.
“You might think it's deliberate,” he said. “If you prevent people from knowing, they are less likely to worry.”
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The Department of Health and Sciences of the Associated Press receives the support of the scientific and educational group of the media from the medical institute Howard Hughes and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
