Opinion - The CDC's injury center is saving lives — but for how much longer?

Yahoo

02-06-2025

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data last month showing that drug overdose deaths declined by nearly 27 percent in the U.S. in 2024 compared to 2023, I felt three competing emotions.
The first emotion was joy. As the executive director of the Safe States Alliance — a partnership of more than 800 professionals and students dedicated to injury and violence prevention — I work with individuals across the country dedicated to saving lives. Here was proof positive of their impact: the equivalent of 81 American lives saved every day over an entire year.
The second emotion was anger. The Trump administration is proposing to eliminate the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the leading federal agency that helps states and communities prevent deaths from drug overdose and other threats.
At a time when the U.S. is experiencing a welcome and long-overdue decline in drug overdose deaths, a decline that public health experts attribute to the very programs the administration seeks to dismantle, this progress is clearly threatened.
The third emotion was hope. And for that, I have Hayley Jelinek to thank.
Jelinek is a health educator at the Two Rivers Public Health Department in Kearney, Nebraska. From running game show-style medication safety training sessions at senior centers to delivering Narcan to local bars — she once distributed more than 250 boxes of Narcan in 90 minutes — Jelinek works relentlessly to teach people how to prevent and treat drug overdose.
Jelinek is a remarkable credit to her profession, but her work is also deeply personal. Four years ago, her son, Ehan, who grappled with mental health and substance misuse issues for more than a decade, died of acute intoxication from tianeptine, an over-the-counter supplement known as 'gas station heroin.'
Tianeptine is marketed as a mood enhancer that can improve cognitive function. In reality, it is a dangerous and addictive opioid agonist that can kill on first use.
As Jelinek says, 'Not one more kid should have to die from this stuff and not one more mom should have to go through what I've gone through.'
The Trump administration should heed these words. For as much as we all celebrate the recent declines, more than 57,000 people in the U.S. still succumbed to drug overdoses last year.
We're nowhere near out of the woods yet. But the administration isn't treating this seriously.
In testimony before congressional committees the day after the CDC announced the new overdose death data, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who is attempting to fire 20,000 federal workers, claw back billions of dollars from local health departments and stop federal research funding on issues like addiction and substance use — claimed that this 'restructuring' was designed to improve Americans' health.
He also suggested that the administration's focus on mental health would compensate for the loss of any overdose prevention programs.
He could not be more wrong. And it's why so many organizations are fighting back.
Eliminating the CDC's injury center would dismantle the CDC's capacity to address not only the opioid crisis but also a range of other public health issues, from drowning to suicide. For overdose prevention alone, it would result in the loss of approximately $280 million in annual support to 90 health departments and $14 million for tribal overdose prevention efforts.
The injury center's Overdose Data to Action program distributes naloxone, improves surveillance and guides state and local responses to the opioid crisis, enabling targeted responses to emerging drug threats.
CDC is also the only federal agency working to reduce overdoses with access to laboratory capabilities. It's a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, treatment and harm reduction strategies.
If President Trump and Secretary Kennedy have their way, all of that work would be gone. Eliminating the injury center would be akin to pulling firefighters off the scene while the fire is still burning. Any 'savings' would pale in comparison to the lives lost and families destroyed.
Ehan was a devoted son, a loving husband and a proud dad to two bonus daughters. He made friends easily and liked to be silly, making up songs at the grocery store and lifting his girls upside down so they could walk on the ceiling of his front porch at home.
He bravely dealt with a hard set of health challenges and, at 26, had his whole life in front of him. Jelinek carries him in her heart every day, crisscrossing Kearney and surrounding areas to make sure other parents don't lose their children.
If the administration and Congress save the CDC's Injury Center, they would be honoring Ehan and supporting the type of work that Jelinek and so many others do each day.
If it is eliminated, more parents will bury more children.
The stakes could not be any higher, and the choice could not be any clearer. I urge our leaders to make the right call.
Sharon Gilmartin is the executive director of the Safe States Alliance.
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