Latest news with #ChildhoodLeadPoisoningPreventionProgram
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Local childhood lead poisoning coalition left questioning funding amid federal cuts
ROCHESTER, N.Y (WROC) — In April, the staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the agency's 'Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program' were all fired as part of reductions in force. Now, a local coalition which does community work to help prevent lead poisonings in children is left with uncertainty amid federal budget negotiations. The 'Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning' is sounding the alarm after recently being revived thanks to support from a program in the CDC. 'The funding from the CDC for the coalition started in 2023 and then it was supposed to go to 2026 and now we have a big question mark,' Program Director Clare Robinson-Henrie said. The Coalition first formed in 2000 and was a driving force, at the time, behind Rochester's groundbreaking 'lead law,' which passed in 2005 and was implemented in 2006, requiring all rental homes in Rochester to pass a lead test as part of the required Certificate of Occupancy (CofO) process. 'Really it had great success,' Robinson-Henrie said. 'In the city of Rochester, which had some of the highest lead poisoning rates previously went down really dramatically compared to the rest of the state so it really works well.' In 2023, Causewave Community Partners, on behalf of CPLP, was awarded funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) three year opportunity: 'Supporting Communities to Reduce Lead Poisoning.' The Coalition tells News 8 those funds dramatically increased the group's capacity to expand and implement programs. In the last year, CPLP has presented to more than 150 community members and provided thousands of lead poisoning prevention materials county-wide. 'For quite a few years there was no staff for the coalition and so we had great support from Causewave, which is our administrative and fiscal home, but no real staff to take it to the next level,' Robinson-Henrie said. 'So, then came along this wonderful opportunity from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which helped fund staff here, staff support, for the Coalition's work.' Robinson-Henrie tells News 8, in the April 1 announcement of staff reductions at the CDC, the Coalition's program officer was fired. The group does significant work in the community to educate folks about the dangers of lead poisoning; New York State requires children get tested for lead at ages one and two and if elevated levels are found, there can be serious health complications. 'They could be at risk for all sorts of cognitive and behavioral issues, speech and language issues,' Robinson-Henrie said. 'And unfortunately it's cumulative, lead poisoning is cumulative so if they keep getting exposed in their home and nothing changes, then they're just getting more and more of it and it settles into your bones eventually.' 'With kids, especially, they ingest it through their mouths. The lead dust that might be created from paint that is on like a door or a window, it has a lot of wear and tear so that creates invisible lead dust that is heavy, falls to the floor, falls on places where they're walking or crawling or on their toys, whatever else, and they ingest it because, as you said, they're putting a lot of stuff in their mouths,' she adds. It's also not just the CDC with systems in place to work towards mitigating lead exposure: Robinson-Henrie also notes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plays a crucial role to ensure the rules are followed; for example, a contractor doing abatement work inside homes with lead paint. All of these programs could be facing significant cuts as the budget process is currently underway in Washington. 'I know that we are only one of many different organizations to be impacted by the changes on the federal level. And ensure that your congress people are hearing from you, making sure that our U.S. senators, you know Congressman Morelle, know about these issues and that you want to make sure that childhood lead poisoning prevention is funded and can continue through the next 25 years,' Robinson-Henrie said. 'It's tragic because lead poisoning is almost entirely preventable and once a kid is lead poisoned it's really hard to reverse those effects; it's possible for them to thrive and have a full life for sure, I don't want to say that, but their opportunities may be narrowed,' Robinson-Henrie adds. 'To date, we have not seen any plans to reinstate the CDC's Childhood Lead Poisoning program. If these cuts are permanent, it will mean fewer resources to keep Monroe County children safe from lead exposure. The Secretary of Health and Human Services must put children's health first and reinstate the program immediately in order to ensure their vital work is not disrupted further.' Mel Callan, Chair of the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Mona Hanna says federal funding cuts reminiscent of precursor to Flint water crisis
Howard Crawford, left, Matt Elliott, center, and Mona Hanna, right, speaks at a panel about the impact of cutting federal funds for higher education research during the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island, Mich., on May 27, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance) MACKINAC ISLAND – Dr. Mona Hanna says federal funding cuts by the administration of President Donald Trump are reminiscent of the circumstances that led to the Flint Water Crisis she helped expose. 'It wasn't just the austerity of changing the water to save money,' Hanna said. 'It was years of austerity in state government and federal government that really had hollowed out our bureaucracies – our Department of Natural Resources at the time, our public health departments that had become skeletons of themselves and they only really could react to crises, and they didn't have the infrastructure to really be proactive and to prevent issues.' She said that when those institutions failed, researchers stepped up. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'It was research that was the scientific safety net,' Hanna said. 'It was the source of truth. It was the check and balance to kind of protect a community.' Among the programs that have already seen its funding cut is the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, Hanna said. Hanna was speaking during a panel at the Mackinac Policy Conference sponsored by Michigan State University. University President Kevin Guskiewicz said other projects at MSU that are either at risk of losing funding or already have include a project to create more resilient crops, research to improve health outcomes for expectant mothers and babies, and a Detroit wastewater surveillance program that was among the first to detect COVID-19. 'Federal investment enables high risk, early stage innovation that commercial entities wouldn't likely fund,' Guskiewicz said. 'It's the starter fuel, as we like to say, for breakthroughs in health, security and technology.' Howard Crawford, senior scientist and scientific director at Henry Ford, researches pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer patients have a median survival of about 10 months, Crawford said. 'The first thing they usually hear from their doctor is to get their affairs in order,' Crawford said. 'And the thing that I always want to tell everyone that ever hears that … is get yourself to a university hospital, because that's where the second opinions are going to come, that's where the clinical trials are being conducted, and that's your best hope.' But he said the research he and others have done is already starting to make an impact, with the five-year survival rate more than doubling since he began 25 years ago, largely due to work done in university hospitals. 'This progress we've made, this is stuff that started 40 years ago, not four years ago, and what we have to have is a continuity of research so that we can make this progress mean something,' Crawford said. While scientists could be on the verge of a breakthrough in treatment, Crawford said that work is jeopardized by the ongoing uncertainty around funding. He said that's in part because the public doesn't understand the impact of the work researchers do. 'We spend all of our time writing papers and writing grants, and that's what we have to do to function, but if the public doesn't understand that's what we're doing, why we're doing it, what is happening in the laboratory, what we're bringing to them in the next few years, that's our goal, and we need to be better,' Crawford said. Hanna added that 'we need to get out of our ivory towers, classrooms and labs and clinics, and get more comfortable in these public spaces.'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
CDC's childhood lead program is still defunct, despite Kennedy's claims
The federal government's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program is not operating, despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claims that it's being funded. The program's 26 staffers were placed on administrative leave in April, with terminations set for June 2, as part of a broader restructuring of federal agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. To date, none of the staffers have been reinstated, with layoffs set to take effect in less than two weeks, said Erik Svendsen, director of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, a department within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that includes the childhood lead program. Kennedy had faced criticism in recent weeks from Democratic senators over the gutting of the program, which assisted state and local health departments with blood lead testing and surveillance. At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Kennedy told Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that the program was still being funded. The week before, he told Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., that he had no plans to eliminate it. But Svendsen said his entire division was dissolved by HHS and can't be easily replaced. 'There are no other experts that do what we do,' he said. 'You can't just push a button and get new people because our areas of public health are so specialized.' Staffers in the childhood lead program have not received direction about how to transition their work, according to two CDC scientists familiar with the matter. Even low levels of lead exposure could put children at risk of developmental delays, learning difficulties and behavioral issues. The CDC program offered technical expertise to help under-resourced health departments prevent those outcomes. In 2023, it helped solve a nationwide lead poisoning outbreak linked to cinnamon applesauce. And it was in frequent contact with the Milwaukee Health Department this year after the city discovered dangerous lead levels in some public schools. Kennedy told Reed on Tuesday that 'we have a team in Milwaukee' offering laboratory and analytics support to the health department. But the Milwaukee Health Department said that Kennedy's statement was inaccurate, and that the city had not received any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to the lead crisis. 'Unfortunately, in this case, that is another example where the secretary doesn't have his facts straight,' said Mike Totoraitis, the city's health commissioner. Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the Milwaukee Health Department, said that the federal government's only recent involvement in the lead crisis was 'a short, two-week visit from a single CDC staff member this month, who assisted with the validation of a new instrument in our laboratory.' 'This support was requested independently of the [Milwaukee Public Schools] crisis and was part of a separate, pre-existing need to expand our lab's long-term capacity for lead testing,' Reinwald said in a statement. HHS has said it will continue efforts to eliminate childhood lead poisoning through a newly created department called the Administration for a Healthy America. But Democratic lawmakers and environmental health groups question how the work can continue without reinstating staffers. 'Despite what you told me last week, that you have no intention of eliminating this program, you fired the entire office responsible for carrying it out,' Baldwin told Kennedy at Tuesday's hearing. 'Your decision to fire staff and eliminate offices is endangering children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee.' HHS did not respond to a request for comment. Kennedy did not offer new details about his agency's restructuring plan at the hearing, citing a court order that compelled the Trump administration to pause efforts to downsize the federal government. Milwaukee's lead crisis became clear to health officials in February, when the city's health department identified dangerous levels of the toxin in school classrooms, hallways and common areas, due to lead dust and deteriorating lead-based paint. Before the childhood lead program was gutted, the CDC had been meeting with the Milwaukee Health Department on a weekly basis to come up with a plan to screen tens of thousands of students for lead poisoning, Totoraitis said. The city's health department asked the CDC on March 26 to send staffers to help, Totoraitis said, but the agency fired its childhood lead team on April 1 and denied Milwaukee's request two days later. 'This is the first time in at least 75 years that the CDC has ever denied an Epi-Aid request, so it's a pretty historic moment,' he said, referring to a request for the CDC to investigate an urgent public health problem. To date, the Milwaukee Health Department has identified more than 100 schools built before 1978, when the federal government banned consumer uses of lead-based paints. Around 40 of those have been inspected, Totoraitis said. Six schools have closed since the start of the year due to lead contamination, and only two have reopened. Around 350 students in Milwaukee have been screened for lead poisoning out of 44,000 identified as having a potential risk, Totoraitis said. The city has confirmed one case linked to lead exposure in school, and two more linked to exposures at both school and home. The health department said it is investigating an additional four cases, which may involve multiple sources of exposure. Totoraitis said the department is accustomed to looking for lead in homes and rental units, but the CDC was supposed to help them scale that operation to inspect larger buildings. CDC staffers were also supposed to help set up lead screening clinics and investigate where kids had been exposed, he said. While the health department is handling those efforts on its own now, Totoraitis said it may not have the capacity to screen everyone in a timely manner. He estimated that the department could manage around 1,000 to 1,200 cases of childhood lead poisoning a year. That includes testing kids' blood lead levels, treating lead poisoning with chelation therapy (which removes heavy metals from the bloodstream) and eliminating exposures in the home by replacing windows and doors. Totoraitis said he's hoping to hire two of the terminated CDC employees for at least a couple of weeks to help address lingering questions about how to manage the crisis. Better yet, he said, 'I keep hoping to get an email from them saying, 'Hey, we got our jobs back.'' This article was originally published on
NBC News
22-05-2025
- Health
- NBC News
CDC's childhood lead program is still defunct, despite Kennedy's claims
The federal government's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program is not operating, despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claims that it's being funded. The program's 26 staffers were placed on administrative leave in April, with terminations set for June 2, as part of a broader restructuring of federal agencies within HHS. To date, none of the staffers have been reinstated, with layoffs set to take effect in less than two weeks, said Erik Svendsen, director of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, a department within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that includes the childhood lead program. Kennedy had faced criticism in recent weeks from Democratic senators over the gutting of the program, which assisted state and local health departments with blood lead testing and surveillance. At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Kennedy told Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that the program was still being funded. The week before, he told Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., that he had no plans to eliminate it. But Svendsen said his entire division was dissolved by HHS and can't be easily replaced. 'There are no other experts that do what we do,' he said. 'You can't just push a button and get new people because our areas of public health are so specialized.' Staffers in the childhood lead program have not received direction about how to transition their work, according to two CDC scientists familiar with the matter. Even low levels of lead exposure could put children at risk of developmental delays, learning difficulties and behavioral issues. The CDC program offered technical expertise to help under-resourced health departments prevent those outcomes. In 2023, it helped solve a nationwide lead poisoning outbreak linked to cinnamon applesauce. And it was in frequent contact with the Milwaukee Health Department this year after the city discovered dangerous lead levels in some public schools. Kennedy told Reed on Tuesday that 'we have a team in Milwaukee' offering laboratory and analytics support to the health department. But the Milwaukee Health Department said that Kennedy's statement was inaccurate, and that the city had not received any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to the lead crisis. 'Unfortunately, in this case, that is another example where the secretary doesn't have his facts straight,' said Mike Totoraitis, the city's health commissioner. Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the Milwaukee Health Department, said that the federal government's only recent involvement in the lead crisis was 'a short, two-week visit from a single CDC staff member this month, who assisted with the validation of a new instrument in our laboratory.' 'This support was requested independently of the [Milwaukee Public Schools] crisis and was part of a separate, pre-existing need to expand our lab's long-term capacity for lead testing,' Reinwald said in a statement. The Department of Health and Human Services has said it will continue efforts to eliminate childhood lead poisoning through a newly created department called the Administration for a Healthy America. But Democratic lawmakers and environmental health groups question how the work can continue without reinstating staffers. 'Despite what you told me last week, that you have no intention of eliminating this program, you fired the entire office responsible for carrying it out,' Baldwin told Kennedy at Tuesday's hearing. 'Your decision to fire staff and eliminate offices is endangering children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee.' HHS did not respond to a request for comment. Kennedy did not offer new details about his agency's restructuring plan at the hearing, citing a court order that compelled the Trump administration to pause efforts to downsize the federal government. Milwaukee's lead crisis became clear to health officials in February, when the city's health department identified dangerous levels of the toxin in school classrooms, hallways and common areas, due to lead dust and deteriorating lead-based paint. Before the childhood lead program was gutted, the CDC had been meeting with the Milwaukee Health Department on a weekly basis to come up with a plan to screen tens of thousands of students for lead poisoning, Totoraitis said. The city's health department asked the CDC on March 26 to send staffers to help, Totoraitis said, but the agency fired its childhood lead team on April 1 and denied Milwaukee's request two days later. 'This is the first time in at least 75 years that the CDC has ever denied an Epi-Aid request, so it's a pretty historic moment,' he said, referring to a request for the CDC to investigate an urgent public health problem. To date, the Milwaukee Health Department has identified more than 100 schools built before 1978, when the federal government banned consumer uses of lead-based paints. Around 40 of those have been inspected, Totoraitis said. Six schools have closed since the start of the year due to lead contamination, and only two have reopened. Around 350 students in Milwaukee have been screened for lead poisoning out of 44,000 identified as having a potential risk, Totoraitis said. The city has confirmed one case linked to lead exposure in school, and two more linked to exposures at both school and home. The health department said it is investigating an additional four cases, which may involve multiple sources of exposure. Totoraitis said the department is accustomed to looking for lead in homes and rental units, but the CDC was supposed to help them scale that operation to inspect larger buildings. CDC staffers were also supposed to help set up lead screening clinics and investigate where kids had been exposed, he said. While the health department is handling those efforts on its own now, Totoraitis said it may not have the capacity to screen everyone in a timely manner. He estimated that the department could manage around 1,000 to 1,200 cases of childhood lead poisoning a year. That includes testing kids' blood lead levels, treating lead poisoning with chelation therapy (which removes heavy metals from the bloodstream) and eliminating exposures in the home by replacing windows and doors. Totoraitis said he's hoping to hire two of the terminated CDC employees for at least a couple of weeks to help address lingering questions about how to manage the crisis. Better yet, he said, 'I keep hoping to get an email from them saying, 'Hey, we got our jobs back.''
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
There is no federal team in Milwaukee responding to lead crisis, city health department says, contrary to RFK Jr. claim
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not have a team in Milwaukee helping with the city's response to lead poisoning in public schools, the Milwaukee Health Department said, contrary to what the federal agency's secretary suggested recently. On May 20, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was testifying before a Senate subcommittee when he was asked about a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that had been laid off, part of sweeping layoffs at the agency in April. The branch was responsible for investigating and preventing lead poisoning, and had been working with Milwaukee health officials in response to widespread lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools. After the layoffs, that collaboration halted, Milwaukee health officials said. "We are continuing to fund the program," Kennedy said on May 20, referring to the CDC's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. "We have a team in Milwaukee, and we're giving laboratory support to the analytics in Milwaukee, and we're working with the health department in Milwaukee." But Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the Milwaukee Health Department, disputed that there is an HHS or CDC team in Milwaukee helping with the lead poisoning response, saying there was no such team. "We have not received any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to the lead crisis in Milwaukee Public Schools," she said in a May 21 statement. Multiple schools have been closed for lead remediation, and plans are in place to clear lead paint hazards from dozens of schools before the next school year begins. The only federal involvement Reinwald pointed to was a two-week visit earlier this month from a single person on a CDC fellowship who helped with setting up a new laboratory instrument to ensure it was working properly. "While the instrument will be used to process lead samples from across the city, including those related to MPS, this assistance was requested independently of the MPS situation and was unrelated to any school-based lead testing," Reinwald said. She said the person was sent to fulfill a narrow role specific to setting up the piece of equipment. "While MHD would have welcomed federal support, we continue to move forward without it," she said. Before the layoffs at HHS, Milwaukee health officials had asked the CDC for on-site help responding to widespread lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools. Their request, made in late March, asked for a small team of CDC experts to come to Milwaukee to lend their expertise and help develop a plan for large-scale testing of MPS students for lead poisoning. After the layoffs, the CDC denied the city's request for help, pointing to "the complete loss of our Lead Program." "We don't have any contacts at the CDC for childhood lead poisoning," Totoraitis said in mid-April. "This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have someone to turn to at the CDC." Sarah Volpenhein can be reached at svolpenhei@ or at 414-607-2159. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: City disputes RFK Jr. claim that team on lead hazards is in Milwaukee
