As we observe National Public Health Week, we urge people across the United States to recognize the indispensability of our country’s public health workers and public health infrastructure.
ChangeLab Solutions was founded to work within a system that includes health departments, community-based organizations, and community members. Collectively, we have all worked to improve health in areas such as tobacco use, HIV prevention, climate change, overdose prevention, access to affordable housing, healthy food systems, and supports for maternal and child health. All these efforts — and others — have saved US residents billions of dollars in health care costs and, more important, millions of lives. Public health endeavors truly are the foundation of a healthy society.
Collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been invaluable in advancing public health and supporting our other partners. Having a strong government that responds to community needs is crucial for creating a nation that has the infrastructure to help people live a long, healthy life — no matter their race, gender, or disability status.
Recent cuts to funding and jobs at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and CDC, however, represent a significant step backward in our nation's commitment to public health. Dismantling their vital programs will disproportionately affect communities that experience unjust health inequities and will weaken our nation’s ability to respond to public health emergencies. Public health leaders are concerned about the serious impact of these recent federal policy changes and budget cuts on health equity, mental health resources, and services for LGBTQ+ communities, people with disabilities, and older adults.
ChangeLab Solutions strongly condemns the actions to cut funding and jobs at HHS and CDC. Under the proposed cuts and restructurings, 20,000 people in the HHS workforce will lose their job, and five regional offices will be closed. These cuts will severely harm Americans' health and our country's public health infrastructure, undermining decades of work by dedicated scientists, doctors, and public health professionals. Cuts like these, executed haphazardly and without adequate review, will put the lives and health of many Americans at risk.
Slashing public health infrastructure has included the following actions:
- Reducing staffing by a third at CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, including eliminating the Office on Smoking and Health, the Division of Oral Health, the Division of Population Health, and parts of the Division of Reproductive Health
- Shutting down HHS’s Office of Minority Health as well as the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
- Eliminating CDC’s Office of Health Equity and supposedly transferring its work to CMS’s Office of Minority Health and HHS’s Office on Women’s Health
- Closing the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice within CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health
ChangeLab Solutions stands ready to collaborate with community leaders who are committed to advancing social justice and health equity. We will continue to work with our partners in communities, local and state governments, and anchor institutions to achieve equitable change.
If you feel compelled to oppose these harmful cuts to the federal public health workforce, please consider the following options:
- Share your public health success stories widely, to demonstrate impact
- Contact your congressional representatives about these harmful cuts
- Read our FAQs on recent executive orders affecting public health
- Contact ChangeLab Solutions for technical assistance on legal and policy issues
In solidarity,
The ChangeLab Solutions staff
4/9/2025