Health department layoffs mean that data on drug use and mental health could sit unused
The entire 17-member U.S. government team responsible for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health received layoff notices Tuesday, as part of the overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It's not clear whether there is an alternative plan to analyze the data, which local and state governments use to develop prevention measures and treatment services. The federal government distributes grant money to fight the opioid addiction crisis based on it. Researchers use it to study trends in depression, alcoholism and tobacco use.
An HHS spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about the survey's future.
The nationally representative survey is conducted in person by an independent research group with about 70,000 people each year. It provides a more complete picture than trends in overdose deaths, which capture only a small segment of the problem, said Lindsey Vuolo of the Partnership to End Addiction.
'We use its findings on a near daily basis in our research, educational programming and resources, and communication materials,' Vuolo said of the survey.
Before the layoffs, the government team was preparing to analyze 2024 data, the first year where trends would be reliable again since the pandemic disrupted data collection, said Jennifer Hoenig, the laid-off director of the Office of Population Surveys.
The data could now sit on the shelf without experienced analysts to untangle it, she said.
'Every person working on it was let go,' Hoenig said, noting that the data collection is mandated by Congress. The office is part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which would be absorbed into a new Administration for a Healthy America under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s plan.
'My team and I care so much about this data that we want people to understand what is being lost in our country if we don't have it,' Hoenig said.
In recent years, the survey has found:
— Seven out of 10 adolescents did not use illicit drugs or drink alcohol in 2023.
— Men 60 and older were more likely than women in the same age group to have a substance use disorder, but women were more likely than men to have had a major depressive episode in 2021 and 2022.
— Lesbian, gay and bisexual young people were about twice as likely as straight young people to have had a substance use disorder in 2023.
— People who report using cannabis in the past year nearly doubled over two decades, from 11% in 2002 to 21.9% in 2022.
'In attempting to solve any public health problem, data is critical,' said Andrew Kessler of Slingshot Solutions, a consulting firm that specializes in addiction and mental health issues. 'It allows us to advocate for and establish policies that fill very large gaps in treatment, thus saving lives in the process.'
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Atlantic
2 hours ago
- Atlantic
COVID Revenge Is Supercharging the Anti-Vaccine Agenda
Four and a half years ago, fresh off the success of Operation Warp Speed, mRNA vaccines were widely considered—as President Donald Trump said in December 2020 —a 'medical miracle.' Last week, the United States government decidedly reversed that stance when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly half a billion dollars' worth of grants and contracts for mRNA-vaccine research. With Kennedy leading HHS, this about-face is easy to parse as yet another anti-vaccine move. But the assault on mRNA is also proof of another kind of animus: the COVID-revenge campaign that top officials in this administration have been pursuing for months, attacking the policies, technologies, and people that defined the U.S.'s pandemic response. As the immediacy of the COVID crisis receded, public anger about the American response to it took deeper root—perhaps most prominently among some critics who are now Trump appointees. That acrimony has become an essential tool in Kennedy's efforts to undermine vaccines. 'It is leverage,' Dorit Reiss, a vaccine-law expert at UC Law San Francisco, told me. 'It is a way to justify doing things that he wouldn't be able to get away with otherwise.' COVID revenge has defined the second Trump administration's health policy from the beginning. Kennedy and his allies have ousted prominent HHS officials who played key roles in the development of COVID policy, as well as scientists at the National Institutes of Health, including close colleagues of Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (and, according to Trump, an idiot and a 'disaster'). In June, Kennedy dismissed every member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which has helped shape COVID-vaccine recommendations, and handpicked replacements for them. HHS and ACIP are now stacked with COVID contrarians who have repeatedly criticized COVID policies and minimized the benefits of vaccines. Under pressure from Trump officials, the NIH has terminated funding for hundreds of COVID-related grants. The president and his appointees have espoused the highly disputed notion that COVID began as a leak from 'an unsafe lab in Wuhan, China'—and cited the NIH's funding of related research as a reason to restrict federal agencies' independent grant-awarding powers. This administration is rapidly rewriting the narrative of COVID vaccines as well. In an early executive order, Trump called for an end to COVID-19-vaccine mandates in schools, even though few remained; earlier this month, HHS rolled back a Biden-era policy that financially rewarded hospitals for reporting staff-vaccination rates, describing the policy as ' coercive.' The FDA has made it harder for manufacturers to bring new COVID shots to market, narrowed who can get the Novavax shot, and approved the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for only a limited group of children, over the objections of agency experts. For its part, the CDC softened its COVID-shot guidance for pregnant people and children, after Kennedy—who has described the shots as 'the deadliest vaccine ever made'—tried to unilaterally remove it. Experts told me they fear that what access remains to the shots for children and adults could still be abolished; so could COVID-vaccine manufacturers' current protection from liability. (Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said in an email that the department would not comment on potential regulatory changes.) The latest assault against mRNA vaccines, experts told me, is difficult to disentangle from the administration's pushback on COVID shots—which, because of the pandemic, the public now views as synonymous with the technology, Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, told me. Kennedy justified the mRNA cuts by suggesting—in contrast to a wealth of evidence—that the vaccines' risks outweigh their benefits, and that they 'fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.' And he insisted, without proof, that mRNA vaccines prolong pandemics. Meanwhile, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya argued that the cancellations were driven by a lack of public trust in the technology itself. In May, the Trump administration also pulled more than $700 million in funds from Moderna that had initially been awarded to develop mRNA-based flu vaccines. The mRNA funding terminated so far came from HHS's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority; multiple NIH officials told me that they anticipate that similar grant cuts will follow at their agency. (In an email, Kush Desai, a spokesperson for the White House, defended the administration's decision as a way to prioritize funding with 'the most untapped potential'; Nixon echoed that sentiment, casting the decision as 'a necessary pivot in how we steward public health innovations in vaccines.') COVID is a politically convenient entryway to broader anti-vaccine sentiment. COVID shots are among the U.S.'s most politicized vaccines, and many Republicans have, since the outbreak's early days, been skeptical of COVID-mitigation policies. Although most Americans remain supportive of vaccines on the whole, most Republicans—and many Democrats—say they're no longer keen on getting more COVID shots. 'People trust the COVID vaccines less,' Nuzzo told me, which makes it easy for the administration's vaccine opponents to use attacks on those vaccines as purchase for broader assaults. For all their COVID-centric hype, mRNA vaccines have long been under development for many unrelated diseases. And experts now worry that the blockades currently in place for certain types of mRNA vaccines could soon extend to other, similar technologies, including mRNA-based therapies in development for cancer and genetic disease, which might not make it through the approval process at Kennedy's FDA. (Nixon said HHS would continue to invest in mRNA research for cancer and other complex diseases.) Casting doubt on COVID shots makes other vaccines that have been vetted in the same way—and found to be safe and effective, based on high-quality data—look dubious. 'Once you establish that it's okay to override something for COVID,' Reiss told me, 'it's much easier to say, 'Well, now we're going to unrecommend MMR.'' (Kennedy's ACIP plans to review the entire childhood-immunization schedule and assess its cumulative effects.) Plenty of other avenues remain for Kennedy to play on COVID discontent—fear of the shots' side effects, distaste for mandates, declining trust in public health and medical experts —to pull back the government's support for vaccination. He has announced, for instance, his intention to reform the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which helps protect manufacturers from lawsuits over illegitimate claims about a vaccine's health effects, and his plans to find 'ways to enlarge that program so that COVID-vaccine-injured people can be compensated.' Some of the experts I spoke with fear that the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—the agency's rough equivalent of ACIP—could be remade in Kennedy's vision. The administration has also been very willing to rescind federal funding from universities in order to forward its own ideas: Kennedy could, perhaps, threaten to withhold money from universities that require any vaccines for students. Kennedy has also insisted that 'we need to stop trusting the experts'—that Americans, for instance, shouldn't have been discouraged from doing their own research during the pandemic. He could use COVID as an excuse to make that maxim Americans' reality: Many public-health and infectious-disease-focused professional societies rely on at least some degree of federal funding, Nirav D. Shah, a former principal deputy director of the CDC, told me. Stripping those resources would be 'a way to cut their legs off'—or, at the very least, would further delegitimize those expert bodies in the public eye. Kennedy has already barred representatives from professional societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, from participating in ACIP subcommittees after those two societies and others collectively sued HHS over its shifts in COVID policy. The public fight between medicine and government is now accelerating the nation onto a path where advice diverges over not just COVID shots but vaccines generally. (When asked about how COVID resentment was guiding the administration's decisions, Desai said that the media had politicized science to push for pandemic-era mandates and that The Atlantic 'continues to fundamentally misunderstand how the Trump administration is reversing this COVID era politicization of HHS.') The coronavirus pandemic began during the first Trump presidency; now its legacy is being exploited by a second one. Had the pandemic never happened, Kennedy would likely still be attacking vaccines, maybe even from the same position of power he currently commands. But without the lightning rod of COVID, Kennedy's attacks would be less effective. Already, one clear consequence of the Trump administration's anti-COVID campaign is that it will leave the nation less knowledgeable about and less prepared against all infectious diseases, Gregory Poland, a vaccinologist and the president of Atria Research Institute, told me. That might be the Trump administration's ultimate act of revenge. No matter who is in charge when the U.S. meets its next crisis, those leaders may be forced into a corner carved out by Trump and Kennedy—one from which the country must fight disease without adequate vaccination, research, or public-health expertise. This current administration will have left the nation with few other options.
WIRED
2 hours ago
- WIRED
RFK Jr. Is Supporting mRNA Research—Just Not for Vaccines
Aug 13, 2025 2:07 PM HHS is slashing hundreds of millions in funding for mRNA vaccines and infectious disease treatments, but leaving the door open to mRNA therapies for cancer and genetic conditions. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Learn more. This month, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was canceling 22 contracts and investments worth nearly $500 million as a part of a 'coordinated wind-down' of mRNA vaccine research. Yet some projects that do not involve mRNA or vaccines have been caught up in the purge. At the same time, the administration has quietly endorsed research into mRNA treatments for cancer and genetic disorders. HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been suspicious of mRNA vaccines, and in May he announced that HHS would no longer recommend mRNA Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. The same month, he canceled a $590 million contract with Moderna, one of the mRNA Covid vaccine manufacturers, for a bird flu vaccine based on the same technology. In a video on social media, he justified the latest cuts by saying 'HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses,' which contradicts the scientific evidence. 'The major misconception is that mRNA is some voodoo thing that we are sticking into our body, that it's a magic molecule from Mars,' says Jonathan Kagan, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School and cofounder of Corner Therapeutics, which is developing mRNA treatments for cancer. Short for messenger RNA, mRNA is a molecule found naturally in every cell in the body. It provides instructions to cell machinery to make certain proteins and is used constantly by the body to run and repair itself. Kagan likens mRNA to an app for human health. Scientists have figured out how to make synthetic versions of the molecule that can be programmed to make different kinds of proteins. This tailored mRNA can then be delivered to people to address various diseases. 'The problem with mRNA is that the first clinical application was the most political thing on the planet,' says Kagan, referring to the mRNA Covid vaccines. 'Therefore the disease got muddied in the technology.' Developed and authorized during President Donald Trump's first administration as part of Operation Warp Speed, the mRNA Covid vaccines use the molecule to direct cells to produce copies of the coronavirus spike protein, stimulating the immune system to create defenses against the virus. The shots were instrumental in reducing deaths and hospitalizations during the pandemic, and while they have a very high safety profile, they have been known to cause rare cases of heart inflammation in boys and young men. In June, the US Food and Drug Administration approved new labeling for Moderna's and Pfizer's mRNA Covid vaccines to emphasize this risk. Research into mRNA vaccines had been ongoing for years, and during the pandemic the technology was used because it allowed for faster manufacturing compared to traditional vaccine development methods. The versatility of mRNA led to an explosion of interest in harnessing it against a range of other diseases, both in vaccines and therapeutics. After the success of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, the US government invested more heavily in mRNA technology. The canceled contracts announced on August 5 were part of a program under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the agency within HHS tasked with developing medical countermeasures against pandemics and other public health threats. Among the projects canceled are some that weren't working with mRNA or on vaccine development. One of the targeted recipients, Tiba Biotech, had a $750,000 contract with BARDA that was slated to end October 30. The company was developing an RNAi-based therapeutic for H1N1 influenza, also known as swine flu. RNAi is short for RNA interference and refers to small pieces of RNA that can shut down the production of specific proteins. The approach has been well studied, and several RNAi-based drugs are on the market. The first was approved in 2018 to treat nerve damage caused by a rare disease called hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis. The contract cancellation came as a surprise to Tiba, which received a stop-work order on August 5 that did not reference the wind-down of BARDA's mRNA vaccine development activities. 'Our project does not involve the development of an mRNA product and is a therapeutic rather than a vaccine,' said Jasdave Chahal, Tiba's chief scientific officer, via email. Government contracts often include specific milestones that contractors must achieve to receive funding and move forward with their projects. Tiba says its project had met its goals so far and was near completion. Also among the canceled contracts was a $750,000 award to Emory University to convert an mRNA-based antiviral treatment for flu and Covid into an inhaled, dry powder formulation. The project did not involve the development of a vaccine. 'Unfortunately, we don't have much insight to offer on the grant cancellation,' Emory spokesperson Brian Katzowitz told WIRED in an email. The cuts are consistent with Kennedy's desire to deprioritize research into infectious diseases, although experts have warned that the cuts could leave the US more vulnerable to future pandemics. Despite its scaling down of RNA-related infectious disease research, the administration has expressed enthusiasm about some non-Covid research involving mRNA. In January, shortly after taking office, President Trump announced a joint venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank called Stargate to invest up to $500 billion for AI infrastructure. At the time, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison talked up the potential for AI to make personalized mRNA-based vaccines for cancer. In an August 12 op-ed in The Washington Post, National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya acknowledged the promise of mRNA. 'I do not dispute its potential. In the future, it may yet deliver breakthroughs in treating diseases such as cancer, and HHS is continuing to invest in ongoing research on applications in oncology and other complex diseases,' he wrote. Unlike his boss, Bhattacharya says he does not believe the mRNA vaccines have caused mass harm. But he says the reason for stopping mRNA vaccine research is because the platform has lost public trust—a rationale that deviates from Kennedy's. Yet mRNA may be more accepted when it comes to treating very sick patients with genetic disorders. Earlier this year, regulators at the FDA greenlit a customized gene-editing treatment for an infant named KJ Muldoon with a rare and life-threatening liver disease. Created in just six months, it uses mRNA to deliver the gene-editing components to his liver. It was the first time a customized gene-editing treatment was used to successfully treat a patient. In June, FDA commissioner Marty Makary praised the achievement on his podcast, calling it 'kind of a big win for medical science,' and at an FDA roundtable Makary said the agency will continue to facilitate the regulatory process for these types of products. The researchers behind the custom gene-editing treatment plan to use the same approach for more patients and recently met with the FDA about a clinical trial proposal. 'The FDA was very positive about the proposal and effectively gave us the green light to proceed with our work,' says Kiran Musunuru, professor for translational research at the University of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The team has another meeting with the FDA in a month or two to discuss extending the platform concept beyond a single disease or single gene to a broader group of disorders. 'We'll see how that goes,' he says.
The Hill
4 hours ago
- The Hill
FDA may pull authorization for Pfizer COVID shot for kids under 5
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering revoking the authorization of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children under 5 years old, the company confirmed Wednesday. The move would add another barrier for parents who want to vaccinate healthy children, as shots from Moderna and Novavax were approved for more limited populations. In May, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The CDC then updated its immunization schedule to reflect that children with no underlying health condition 'may receive' COVID-19 vaccines after consulting with a health care provider — what's known as 'shared decision-making.' If FDA pulls its emergency use authorization, Pfizer's vaccine would no longer be available to any children younger than 5. Right now, Moderna and Novavax shots could be administered 'off label' to healthy children. 'We are currently in discussions with the agency on potential paths forward and have requested that the EUA for this age group remain in place for the 2025-2026 season,' a Pfizer spokesman told The Hill. 'It is important to note that these deliberations are not related to the safety and efficacy of the vaccine which continues to demonstrate a favorable profile,' the company added. The Guardian first reported on the FDA's potential move. In a statement to The Hill, HHS said it wouldn't comment on potential changes. 'The COVID-19 pandemic ended with the expiration of the federal public health emergency in May 2023. We do not comment on potential, future regulatory changes. Unless officially announced by HHS, discussion about future agency action should be regarded as pure speculation,' HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said. Pfizer has had full FDA approval for its COVID-19 vaccine for individuals age 12 and older since 2022.
