CDC denies Milwaukee's request for help with unsafe lead levels in public schools
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has denied a request from Milwaukee's public health department for assistance in managing unsafe lead levels in the city's public schools, citing the loss of its lead experts in mass firings last week across federal health agencies.
'I sincerely regret to inform you that due to the complete loss of our Lead Program, we will be unable to support you with this EpiAid request,' Aaron Bernstein, director of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the CDC, wrote late last week to Milwaukee officials, according to a letter obtained by CNN.
EpiAid is a CDC program providing a short-term loan of an officer from the public health agency's Epidemic Intelligence Service, or EIS. These 'disease detectives' are sent to state and local health departments to investigate urgent public health problems.
In Milwaukee's case, the city requested the CDC's help March 26 with the investigation of lead exposure in its public schools, after the health department identified hazardous levels of lead contamination in multiple school buildings. CNN reported last week that Milwaukee's health commissioner, Dr. Michael Totoraitis, had been working with the CDC for two months to address the threat.
Lead is toxic to the brain, and no levels of exposure are considered safe. It can be present in buildings constructed before 1978, when it was still legal to use lead in paint.
On April 1 – the day about 10,000 federal health employees lost their jobs as part of a massive Reduction in Force across the US Department of Health and Human Services – Milwaukee officials received an email from a CDC epidemiologist telling them 'my entire division was eliminated today,' apologizing that she wouldn't be able to continue working with the city on the response and referring them to other points of contact within the agency.
'The new points of contact were essentially unable to say what level of support they would provide us moving forward,' Totoraitis told CNN at the time.
Two days later, asked about the cutting of the CDC's lead poisoning prevention and surveillance branch, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that the program might be reinstated.
'There are some programs that were cut that are being reinstated, and I think that's one of them,' he said April 3, noting that 'there were a number of instances where … personnel that should not have been cut were cut.'
A spokesperson for HHS told CNN that day that 'HHS is planning to continue the important work of the lead poisoning prevention and surveillance branch that works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning under the Administration for a Healthy America,' a newly created organization within the agency.
But that same evening, Milwaukee received the email from the CDC denying its EpiAid request.
'While we're disappointed, [the Milwaukee Health Department]'s work has not stopped,' Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the department, told CNN by email Friday. 'This only underscores the importance of the role local public health plays in protecting communities – and the challenges we now face without federal expertise to call on.'
A spokesperson for HHS didn't immediately return CNN's request for comment. CBS News first reported that the CDC had denied the request.
Milwaukee's health department, Reinwald said, 'remains committed to moving this work forward and finding solutions locally.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Medscape
33 minutes ago
- Medscape
Should Kids Get the HPV Vaccine Earlier?
Recommending the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination to parents of 9- to 10-year-old children allowed clinicians to discuss cancer prevention and avoid the sticky subject of sexual activity that often comes up with older age groups, new research showed. The study, published in Pediatrics , also found that parents were generally open to having their 9- to 10-year-old children vaccinated for HPV. 'At ages 9-10, sexual activity was less salient, and HPV was the only vaccine to discuss,' said Caroline Tietbohl, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado in Aurora, Colorado, and lead author of the study. 'This made discussions shorter and easier and also paid forward to the 11-year-old visit, where there was now one less vaccine to discuss.' HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the US, with approximately 42 million people currently infected. The US CDC currently recommends the HPV series vaccine as part of routine vaccination beginning at age 11 years, but states that vaccination can start at age 9 years. The vaccine is highly effective for preventing several types of cancer, including cervical and oropharyngeal cancers. Two doses are recommended for most people who start the series before age 15 years, and three doses are recommended for those who start the series after age 15 years, as well as immunocompromised individuals. Yet only 40% of children between 9 years and 17 years of age have received at least one dose. Tietbohl said her team was motivated to conduct the research by persistently low completion rates of the HPV series despite strong evidence that the vaccine is safe and highly effective at preventing cancer. 'We anticipated that bringing up the HPV vaccine at this age could make the discussion easier by decoupling it from sexual activity and focusing on its purpose — cancer prevention — and this seems to have been true for many parents in our study,' Tietbohl said. She and her colleagues surveyed and interviewed pediatricians and staff between 2021 to 2022 at 17 clinics in Colorado and 16 in California. The practices were randomly assigned to either recommend the HPV vaccine to parents of the younger children or to continue at the current standard at ages of 11-12 years. Surveys assessed how the shift was implemented, while interviews provided more detail about any challenges or benefits observed. Prior to the intervention, none of the clinics had recommended the vaccine to younger patients, instead following the current standard recommendation. One month after the intervention, over 90% of clinicians in Colorado and 77% of those in California reported routinely recommending the vaccine to children at ages 9 years or 10 years. Most clinicians and staff in the intervention group reported that parents were largely receptive to the earlier recommendation, sometimes to the clinician's surprise. Many said they had expected parents to push back, assuming that discussions of the HPV vaccine would raise concerns about sexual activity or be met with hesitation. Instead, they found that conversations were easier at ages 9 years and 10 years because sexual activity was less of a consideration for parents at that age. Angela Myers, MD The findings build on evidence that parents may be more receptive when the discussion starts earlier, said Angela Myers, MD, professor of pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who was not involved in the study. 'The earlier we get kids vaccinated against HPV, the better their immune response,' Myers said. 'Sexual activity becomes kind of a nonthought at age 9. That's as it should be because this is a cancer prevention vaccine.' Despite the positive response, some clinicians noted challenges, including electronic health record reminders that still reflected the older age recommendation, as well as occasional parental surprise at being offered the vaccine at a younger age. 'The main hitch was that some parents were not expecting to discuss the HPV vaccine until age 11 and had already promised their kids that the 9- or 10-year-old visit would not include shots,' Tietbohl said. The next phase of the research will focus on analyzing whether earlier vaccination improves rates of series completion by age 13 years, Tietbohl said. Myers said recommending the vaccine earlier could help improve vaccination rates by giving families more time to complete the series before adolescence. 'Every new study that gets published adds a little bit more to the story,' Myers said. 'Collectively, all of the data can help in saying, 'Perhaps we should take another look at this and perhaps we should change the language slightly.' Tietbohl and Myers did not report any relevant conflicts of interest. The study was supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Poll: Colorado voters do not want to see funding cuts for assistance programs
DENVER (KDVR) — As the spending plan known as the One, Big, Beautiful Bill makes its way through the U.S. Senate, new polling is out here at home, giving insight into how some Coloradans feel about programs that could see cuts under the proposal. The poll by Healthier Colorado shows that support for programs like SNAP and Medicaid is strong among Colorado voters. Safe2Tell report involving sexual misconduct leads to arrest 'They are going to rip this away from Colorado, but also the 36 other states that have utilized this,' said Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen. The congresswoman representing Colorado's seventh congressional district is concerned that substance abuse programs funded by Medicaid could be gutted if cuts inside the spending proposal in Washington come to fruition. 'With the budget proposal, they are taking states' ability to apply for the waiver that we utilized in Colorado and across the nation to draw down federal dollars to support treatment programs for those who are struggling with addiction,' Pettersen said. The concern over cuts comes as new data from the Centers for Disease Control shows a 35% drop in fentanyl deaths among young people in Colorado. New polling data from a Healthier Colorado survey out today also shows how some Coloradans may feel about the potential cuts to services. The survey, conducted between late last month and the early part of this month, polled 675 Colorado voters. 49% of them are unaffiliated voters, 26% are registered Democrats, 23% are registered Republicans. Aurora City Council will not hold in-person meetings until Kilyn Lewis lawsuit concludes Of the folks polled, 48% of people surveyed say they want to see an increase in Medicaid funding, and 25% said they would like to see it stay about the same. Only 21% say they would like to see a decrease. The survey also polled people about SNAP benefits, with 83% of people surveyed saying they support funding those benefits. 404 of the 675 people who took the survey live in Colorado's eighth congressional district. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Biden's COVID czar hammers RFK Jr. over vaccine panel overhaul
Former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, who served under former President Biden, criticized the decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fire all 17 experts on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) vaccine panel. Kennedy announced the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on Monday, saying, 'A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.' But in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Jha pushed back against Kennedy's reasoning. 'Look, what he said in his op-ed was a series of nonsense about a group of individuals, experts …who shape what vaccines, if any, are going to be available to the American people,' Jha said in the interview. 'So obviously this is very concerning,' he continued. 'We'll have to see who he appoints next. But this is a step in the wrong direction.' Jha said he is concerned about what the move foretells about the secretary's agenda on vaccines. Jha pointed to what he characterized as a lackluster response from the secretary to 'the worst measles outbreak of the last 25 years.' He also expressed concern regarding Kennedy's raising questions about vaccines causing autism, which Jha dismissed and said was 'settled science.' 'Then you put this in the middle of all of that,' Jha said, referring to the vaccine panel sweep, 'and what you have is a pretty clear picture that what Secretary Kennedy is trying to do is make sure that vaccines are not readily available to Americans, not just for kids, for the elderly.' 'He could go pretty far with this move, and I really am worried about where we're headed,' Jha continued. He said he's particularly concerned about the effect Kennedy's move will have on kids and whether they will continue having access to certain vaccines in the future. 'Kids rely on vaccines. I'm worried about whether the next generation of kids are going to have access to polio vaccines and measles vaccines. That's where we're heading. That's what we have to push back against.' Kennedy said in his op-ed that he was removing every member of the panel to give the Trump administration an opportunity to appoint its own members. Kennedy has long accused members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of having conflicts of interest, sparking concern among vaccine advocates that he would seek to install members who are far more skeptical of approving new vaccines. But Jha pushed back against criticism that the panel was all Biden-appointed experts, saying, 'When the Biden administration came in, almost all of the appointees had come from the first Trump administration.' 'That was fine because they were good people,' he said. 'They were experts. Right now, it's the same thing. The people he is firing are experts — like a nurse in Illinois who spent her entire career getting kids vaccinated, cancer doctors from Memorial Sloan Kettering — like these are really good people.' 'And generally, CDC has not worried about when were they appointed. The question is, are they good and are they conflict free.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
