Dozens of ‘public health heroes' laid off across Utah as Trump cuts COVID-19 funds short
A nurse gives a measles, mumps and rubella virus vaccine at the Utah County Health Department on April 29, 2019 in Provo, Utah. (Photo by)
The fallout from the Trump administration's move to claw back about $11 billion in public health funding as part of federal budget cuts targeting COVID-19 response grants has hit Utah.
Dozens of public health employees in Utah's state and local health departments will lose their jobs after roughly $100 million in Utah grants were cut short — ending funding nearly two years earlier than expected.
Last week, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services received 'unexpected notification' from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that some COVID-related grants stemming from the American Rescue Plan Act had ended effective immediately, state health department officials said in a news release issued Friday.
Across the Utah health department, six grants were cut short, totaling about $98 million that remained before the grant period that was supposed to have ended at the close of 2026. The grants, according to the department, funded 'public health functions and behavioral health services.'
Out of its roughly 6,000 employees, the Utah health department said it had 187 staff positions 'funded partially or completely by the impacted funds.' Many of the positions were temporary, but on Friday state department officials announced more than three dozen state workers will lose their jobs.
'Unfortunately, we had to announce today an early reduction of 37 staff in positions funded by these specific COVID-related grants,' the Utah Department of Health and Human Services said. 'These staff positions will end April 11.'
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Tracy Gruber, director of Utah's health department, called those employees who were laid off 'public health heroes.'
'We are sorry to see these positions end early,' Gruber said in a statement. 'We consider them all public health heroes, many of whom joined our department when we needed to ramp up operations to keep Utahns safe during the global pandemic. These staff came in to serve the public at an incredibly difficult time.'
In an email sent to staff on Friday, department officials said the funds had allowed Utah to 'perform critical functions during the pandemic, including purchasing vaccines, engaging in wastewater testing, and providing critical behavioral health services.'
After the pandemic ended, the federal government extended the funds to 'retain critical capacity in public health systems across the country and ameliorate the impacts of COVID-19,' the staff email continued. 'Like other states, Utah continued utilizing these funds as we evaluated our long-term strategy to retain this critical capacity.'
However, 'the federal government terminated these funds early,' it continued.
'This was not entirely unexpected, but the timing was,' state health department leaders said in the staff email. 'The majority of this funding was set to be expended by the end of 2026 so the department was preparing for this funding to end.'
The 'lack of warning' from the early cut off is 'causing some challenges,' in the health department as it continues its work, the email said, 'but we know the staff and our external partners bear the real stress and fear of the sudden decisions by our federal partners.'
'This sudden action is disappointing and not what we would expect from our partners,' the staff email added.
State health officials added that in the days leading up to Friday's announcement, they had been analyzing the impact and waiting to see if the decision would be reversed, but by the end of the week they said the funds were, in fact, being terminated.
The state health department also warned that it continues to evaluate the impact of the cuts, and warned 'it is possible we will need to make additional staff reductions. We anticipate making that decision in the very near future.'
When federal officials made the announcement last week, they characterized the grants as no longer needed and wasting taxpayer money.
'The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,' the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement, the Associated Press reported.
Carrie Butler, executive director at the Utah Public Health Association, said the impacts of the federal funds ran far deeper than COVID-19 — they helped 'strengthen the public health infrastructure workforce' after years of being underfunded.
'That is something that is really important and critical for people to understand, that a majority of (Utah's public health funding) comes from federal grant money,' Butler said.
She said the federal cuts will impact Utah's public health system as a whole, including programs focused on proactive or preventative health programs meant to help keep the state's population healthy and 'resilient' ahead of the next public health disaster.
'When the pandemic hit, it hit at a time when we were underfunded (for) disease mitigation,' or programs meant to reduce preventable health issues, she said. 'Then when the pandemic hit and we got all of these extra ARPA funds, we were able to build back a little bit of our infrastructure.'
From immunization programs, to diabetes prevention and smoking cessation, Butler said Utah was able to make progress to help make its population healthier, but now with those federal funds drying up early, she said those efforts will become more difficult.
'While we knew (the funds) were temporary, we also had planned them all out to create and finish the programs and infrastructure,' she said. But now, 'there's a significant amount of sunk cost.'
Butler said the Utah Public Health Association also had to lay off one employee that was working on building a community health worker certification process. She said that the program was slated to be finished by June. Now, she said 'we are going to try our best' to use volunteer hours to finish the program on time.
'We're going to try to get it done,' she said. 'We are used to being scrappy. But it also means there are a lot of gaps that wouldn't otherwise exist if we were adequately funded.'
Butler added that public health workers are also dealing with continued anxiety over what could come next — including the likelihood there are more federal funds on the chopping block.
'We're all a little bit nervous about what this means for future funding and for public health infrastructure,' she said. 'By no stretch of the imagination do any of us think that this is the end of the cuts.'
At least 32 workers have been laid off from some of Utah's 13 local health departments — most of which come from Utah's most populated county.
The biggest number will come from Salt Lake County, whose health department will lay off 17 employees in epidemiology, nursing, community health and communications workers, according to the department's spokesperson Nic Rupp.
'It's a devastating blow to our workforce,' Rupp said, adding that the news left some in the county's offices 'in tears' last week. 'It's not just folks who are losing their jobs, although of course they are the most impacted. But it's everyone around them. It's a work family.'
Salt Lake County Health Department: 17
Bear River Health Department (Box Elder, Cache and Rich County): 5
Southwest Utah Health Department (Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane, Washington counties): 5
Southeast Utah Health Department (Carbon, Emery, Grand counties): 2
Tooele County Health Department: 3 positions impacted, but will be kept on until December
Davis County Health Department: Still evaluating
Utah County Health Department: No layoffs
Central Utah Public Health Department (Juab, Millard, Piute, Sevier, Wayne, Sanpete counties): No layoffs
Weber-Morgan Health Department: No layoffs
Wasatch County Health Department: No layoffs
San Juan County: No layoffs
Summit County and the Tricounty Health Department (Uintah, Daggett, Duchesne counties): Did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Public health workers have 'been through a lot together,' Rupp said, adding that 'most of these folks have been with us for many years.'
'They genuinely care about their work. They genuinely care about Salt Lake County, and it's really tragic that they're not going to be able to continue doing what they love and what they're good at,' Rupp said.
He added the Salt Lake County Health Department will continue its work — just with fewer people.
'Collectively, it is a significant loss,' he said. 'We in public health will continue to do what we need to to protect community and environmental health in Salt Lake County, but losing these 17 public health professionals doesn't change the amount of work. … It just means there's going to be the same amount of work spread across fewer experts.'
Rupp said these Salt Lake County employees in many cases worked in public health for years. 'They are investigating diseases. They're immunizing children. They're connecting community members to health resources. And they're communicating about health topics to the public,' he said.
While the COVID-19 grants were expected to eventually expire, 'the fact that it was an immediate and early end to funds that had been promised to us for another year, in most cases, that is especially challenging,' Rupp said.
Some of the Salt Lake County workers that will be laid off had expected to finalize certain projects on a defined timeline, 'and this change upsets that plan,' Rupp said, though he added Salt Lake County is 'working to pivot some additional funding so we can at least appropriately wrap up these projects.'
He also said county officials are working to at least give the 17 workers 30-days notice 'so we can appropriately wind down projects, transfer responsibilities, (and) figure out the best way to respond to this.'
Rupp said Salt Lake County lost roughly $6 million in grants. Later Monday, after county finance officials met to determine next steps, Rupp said county leaders are looking to use about $350,000 in funding from other grants in order to keep the 17 impacted county employees on for about two to 12 weeks, 'depending on (their) position and how long we expect it will take to conclude the position's projects.'
The Bear River Health Department (which serves Box Elder, Cache and Rich Counties) laid off five people, and their last day was Friday, according to department spokesperson Estee Hunt. She said the layoffs included people working in epidemiology, front office staff, and community health workers.
'Of course it's sad,' Hunt said. 'We hate to lose our colleagues. It didn't decrease the amount of work that we have to do, it just meant that the work is going to be spread out among fewer public health professionals. So it's definitely tricky.'
The Southwest Utah Health Department (which covers Beaver, Garfield, Iron, Kane and Washington counties), also laid off five community health workers, according to spokesperson David Heaton.
The Southeast Utah Health Department (which includes Carbon, Emery and Grand counties), laid off two community health workers. The department's spokesperson, Brittany Garff, said they were given a 'couple of weeks' notice.
'We're rural, we're small,' Garff said, adding it will 'definitely impact our entire department. We will of course make every effort to cover where they helped the community, but it definitely will be a difficult transition to lose them.'
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The Tooele County Health Department said three staff members were impacted by the sudden cut off, impacting three staff members in the county's Division of Population Health. However, county officials said in an email that 'we identified alternative short-term funding to sustain the affected positions until the end of December 2025 and notified the staff members.'
'This approach will give us time to seek more sustainable funding for the important work our Division of Population Health does around epidemiology, data analysis, community engagement, and health strategy in ways that support the whole health department and county,' Tooele County officials said, though they added, 'We are mindful of other health departments throughout the state who have been impacted by these federal funding cuts.'
The Davis County Health Department is still evaluating its impacts, according to spokesperson Trevor Warner.
'We knew that this funding was going to come to an end, but we didn't expect it to be this quickly,' he told Utah News Dispatch in a text message. 'At this time, we are still evaluating things. We expect an impact because of the funding cuts, but we just don't know the scale yet.'
The Utah County Health Department won't have any layoffs, according to spokesperson Aislynn Tolman-Hill, who noted that it had not used federal funding related to COVID-19 since early 2024.
'Utah County Health Department stopped using all COVID-related funding at the beginning of 2024,' Tolman-Hill said in an email. 'Utah County as a whole made a concerted effort not to rely on COVID funds moving forward from early 2024, and the health department followed suit.'
The Central Utah Public Health Department (which includes Juab, Millard, Piute, Sevier, Wayne, Sanpete counties), the Weber-Morgan, Wasatch, and the San Juan health departments all told Utah News Dispatch they have not implemented any layoffs at this time related to the federal cuts, though some job responsibilities had to be 'realigned.'
Officials at Summit County and the Tricounty Health Department (which covers Uintah, Daggett and Duchesne counties) did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
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