Federal funding cuts have Pierce County health officials ‘reimagining' services

Yahoo

04-04-2025

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department hasn't been immune to federal budget cuts, while federal-level layoffs also have left data collection in at least one program at risk.
In response to questions, TPCHD media representative Kenny Via told The News Tribune that two local health department programs took the initial hit of funding losses: one tied to COVID-19 response and the other with wildfires.
'Washington State Department of Health informed us last week that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eliminated a large portion of state COVID-19 response funding,' Via said in an emailed statement. 'We had been using a portion of these funds to continue some education and vaccination efforts.'
He noted, 'While this will reduce our capacity to support vaccinations in the community, our Disease Prevention and Management Division will continue to lead this work using a combination of our regular funding and ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds from Pierce County.'
As of late Thursday afternoon, funding tied to COVID-19 response appeared to be restored through legal action, though Via said the department had yet to receive any updates.
The other cut was tied to a $1 million, 3-year grant that began in March 2024 'to help build community capacity to protect against wildfires, wildfire smoke, and the health effects associated with both,' Via wrote.
The Environmental Protection Agency terminated the grant last month.
'We remain committed to this work, even as this loss in funding will make it more difficult,' Via wrote.
According to the EPA's letter, a copy of which was shared with The News Tribune, the EPA assistance agreement was terminated 'in its entirety effective immediately on the grounds that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.'
The funding was among $8.2 million of grants the EPA announced in October 2023 for Washington state for 10 separate environmental justice projects.
The EPA at the time said, 'The selectees will use the funds to ensure disadvantaged communities that have historically suffered from underinvestment have access to clean air and water and climate resilience solutions.'
TPCHD's project was identified as the 'Community-Led Wildfire Preparedness Initiative in Key Peninsula, East and Southeast Pierce County.' The health department announced the launch of the wildfire program in November 2023.
The EPA on March 10 announced that its administrator Lee Zeldin 'with the assistance of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), identified and canceled more than 400 additional grants across nine unnecessary programs totaling $1.7 billion in savings for the American people.'
'Zeldin canceled grants and contracts related to DEI and environmental justice in the first round of spending cuts,' it noted.
Environmental-justice projects were a priority of the Biden administration, which the Trump administration has worked to end.
In a letter dated March 25 to Zeldin, a group of U.S. senators wrote that the terminations 'which violate a number of court orders —escalate your attempts to impound Congressionally appropriated, legally-obligated funds protecting clean air and clean water. ... '
Missing CDC information was reported earlier this year as agencies scrubbed pages of diversity, equity and inclusion language as per executive orders. Much of those 'have since been restored,' Via told The News Tribune on Thursday.
He added, the department is still 'seeing gaps' in some federal data.
'CDC is also changing how it collects data, which will make it difficult to compare future data to what was collected before,' he said via email.
One such data collection with an unclear future is the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS).
PRAMS is a joint project between state health departments and the CDC, where data is collected through surveys on maternal experiences before, during and shortly after pregnancy, used to improve maternal and infant health outcomes.
The program was developed in the 1980s to gain insight on health disparities among mothers and infants in high-risk populations, with states compiling information and then maintained on a national level by the CDC.
The information collected can 'help identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems,' according to Via. 'It is our only regular source of information on some important health outcomes such as postpartum depression.
'This is valuable national data that we won't be able to replace at the local level,' he added.
On March 12, Democratic U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, whose district stretches from eastern Tacoma to Olympia, was one of two-dozen D.C. lawmakers who signed on to a letter seeking answers from the CDC as to PRAMS future.
The CDC's PRAMS website as of Thursday listed a note that 'CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders' and noted that 'PRAMS 2023 data is anticipated to be available to sites by March 2025,' while 'PRAMS 2025 birth cohort data collection is anticipated to begin by April 2025.'
STAT News website reported April 1 that an email from a CDC epidemiologist alerted some states that the entire CDC PRAMS team had received a Reduction in Force notice that day.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week saw 10,000 reported job cuts nationwide across its divisions, including the shutdown of its Region 10 office in Seattle, which serves Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
HHS has said it is working to streamline units and essentially replace the current administrative structure with the Administration for a Healthy America.
TPCHD Director of Public Health Chantell Harmon Reed addressed the cuts at Wednesday's regular Board of Health session.
On the wildfire grant elimination, she noted that since implementation of the funding, the department had been able to use 'about 10% of that funding to build relationships and share wildfire information throughout community events, workshops, home/work assessments and social media.
'But, of course, there is so much to do,' she added in her comments Wednesday to the board. 'It is unfortunate that we're losing this money, but there is still work that we have to do in that space.'
Reed said that the health department is continuing to work with entities such as the Pierce Conservation District. 'We have six Pierce County library workshops scheduled this spring. Those are set to continue,' she added.
'Even though there is a loss of funding, we are realigning and reimagining duties of our staff, specifically in environmental health for the EPA grant, so that we can make sure that there is no disconnect in services,' she said.
In the meantime, other funding reductions could be on the horizon, Reed warned.
'Refugee health is also another area that we are concerned about,' she told the board Wednesday. 'DOH also is seeing significant changes in their staffing because of their loss of funding. So we are bracing ourselves for the anticipation of what's going to be coming next.'
Reed said the health department was notified by state DOH last week about the loss of the funds allocated through COVID-19 response.
'We're trying to make sure that we can continue as much work as possible,' she added, including immunization clinics.
On Tuesday, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown announced that the state was co-leading a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over $11 billion in cuts to public health grants for two dozen states, which were funds tied to COVID-19 response.
The grants provided support for a wide range of public health needs nationwide, including identifying, tracking, and addressing infectious diseases; immunization access; and modernizing public health infrastructure.
Some of the national funding was not set to expire until as late as June 2027.
The U.S. government's argument for the grant terminations was that the funding was appropriated through one or more COVID-19 related laws, and that the government's pandemic emergency declaration had officially expired nearly two years ago.
Late Thursday afternoon, the state Attorney General's office announced that the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island had granted a temporary restraining order, restoring the $11 billion in public health funding to state and local public health agencies across the country, including Washington state.