Latest news with #HospitalPreparednessProgram
Scientific American
09-05-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
Trump Aims to Cuts Program Used to Help Hospitals Evacuate During Disasters
CLIMATEWIRE | When the McBride wildfire erupted in New Mexico three years ago, David Merritt had a math problem. The fire was closing in on a Lincoln County hospital with 11 admitted patients, but the ambulance drivers who would normally evacuate those patients were busy fighting the blaze. High winds ruled out air evacuations. There were also only two ways out of the town of Ruidoso, and the way leading to the next-nearest hospital was in the evacuation zone. Merritt, who is a federal health care preparedness coordinator, needed to not only find drivers — but ones who could move the patients an hour away. And he did, by calling in people and resources throughout the state. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. But the next time there's a fire, Merritt might not be there to help. President Donald Trump has asked Congress to eliminate funding for the Department of Health and Human Services' Hospital Preparedness Program, which fully funds Merritt's salary. That could halt work Merritt is doing this year to ensure local officials have a plan to prevent measles from spreading in evacuation shelters used during wildfires. 'My whole job is to figure out all the things that are going to go wrong and figure out how to cooperatively work together to solve those problems, but I may not be here,' said Merritt. 'If HPP goes away, none of that work is done now.' The Hospital Preparedness Program isn't just for hospitals. Created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the program also funds training for emergency managers and emergency responders to make sure every aspect of a region's health care system has a plan for and is able to communicate during disasters, whether they are pandemics, cyberattacks, mass shootings, wildfires or hurricanes. The program has paid for unified communications systems between hospitals and emergency responders, and chemical decontamination supplies, too. It also provides the salary for regional coordinators throughout the United States to help run trainings and respond to events. Trump's fiscal 2026 budget request to Congress asks lawmakers to zero out all $240 million in funding for the program, which is part of HHS' Administration for Preparedness and Response. The budget justifies the request by saying the HPP 'has been wasteful and unfocused.' 'This proposal remedies those flaws by allowing States and Territories to properly scope and fund hospital preparedness,' it says. HHS referred questions asking for more details on those "flaws" to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to POLITICO's E&E News by press time. Coordinators who are funded by for the program say it provides critical support to states and territories. 'You're taking down a system that brings multiple agencies together beforehand to respond to disasters, you're cutting down a lot of networking and a lot of preparedness, a lot of training and a lot of resources that we get beforehand to allow us to be able to respond proactively to disasters,' said T.L. Davis, who was the readiness and response coordinator for the Northeast Arkansas Preparedness and Emergency Response Systems until 2022. In June 2021, his office jumped into action when multiple tornadoes ripped through Northeast Arkansas, flattening not one but two nursing homes. Local emergency responders were already swamped with calls, so Davis' coalition sent out an Ambubus, a vehicle that looks like a school bus but is equipped like an ambulance to treat multiple injured people. The Ambubus, which had been purchased with HPP funds, helped evacuate and care for more than 100 patients from the nursing homes. 'If we had not had that HPP funding, we wouldn't have been able to do that, the response times would have been much longer and we could have had casualties,' Davis said. Tom Cotter founded the Health Response Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates resilience in health care systems. He said HPP and the coordinator positions it funds are particularly invaluable in mass-casualty medical events. 'When something happens, you want the system to be able to work together as a whole rather than have disjointed units working on their own in a silo,' Cotter said. 'The Hospital Preparedness Program helps make that happen.' That's what happens in North Carolina during hurricanes. During both Hurricanes Florence and Helene, the Duke Healthcare Preparedness Coalition, funded by HPP, was tasked with running specialty shelters for patients with unique medical needs, like those who require at-home dialysis or ventilators. 'These are people who need 24-hour care, and if we didn't have these shelters, they would have to go to hospitals during disasters when you want to keep the load out of hospitals,' said J. David Marsee, the health care preparedness coordinator for the coalition. 'When we show up, we are working closely with the local agencies to help take that load off.' During disasters, Marsee's coalition relies heavily on volunteer staff from Duke University and its health care system. The university is now 'working through different alternatives' for what could happen if the HPP is defunded, he said. 'We are not sure how well prepared for the next disaster we may be,' Marsee said. Florida Hospital Association President Mary Mayhew said the HPP has been critical to helping train health care groups in her state around hurricane-related evacuations. That was particularly true last fall during Hurricane Michael, when more than 300 health care facilities, including hospitals and nursing homes, had to be evacuated in advance of a storm predicted to cover a large swath of the state. 'We keep getting tested over and over again with different and more complex challenges and this work is foundational to supporting all of the efforts that occur in the midst of a disaster response,' she said.
E&E News
09-05-2025
- Health
- E&E News
Hospitals use this program to evacuate in disasters. Trump wants to cut it.
When the McBride wildfire erupted in New Mexico three years ago, David Merritt had a math problem. The fire was closing in on a Lincoln County hospital with 11 admitted patients, but the ambulance drivers who would normally evacuate those patients were busy fighting the blaze. High winds ruled out air evacuations. There were also only two ways out of the town of Ruidoso, and the way leading to the next-nearest hospital was in the evacuation zone. Merritt, who is a federal health care preparedness coordinator, needed to not only find drivers — but ones who could move the patients an hour away. And he did, by calling in people and resources throughout the state. Advertisement But the next time there's a fire, Merritt might not be there to help. President Donald Trump has asked Congress to eliminate funding for the Department of Health and Human Services' Hospital Preparedness Program, which fully funds Merritt's salary. That could halt work Merritt is doing this year to ensure local officials have a plan to prevent measles from spreading in evacuation shelters used during wildfires. 'My whole job is to figure out all the things that are going to go wrong and figure out how to cooperatively work together to solve those problems, but I may not be here,' said Merritt. 'If HPP goes away, none of that work is done now.' The Hospital Preparedness Program isn't just for hospitals. Created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the program also funds training for emergency managers and emergency responders to make sure every aspect of a region's health care system has a plan for and is able to communicate during disasters, whether they are pandemics, cyberattacks, mass shootings, wildfires or hurricanes. The program has paid for unified communications systems between hospitals and emergency responders, and chemical decontamination supplies, too. It also provides the salary for regional coordinators throughout the United States to help run trainings and respond to events. Trump's fiscal 2026 budget request to Congress asks lawmakers to zero out all $240 million in funding for the program, which is part of HHS' Administration for Preparedness and Response. The budget justifies the request by saying the HPP 'has been wasteful and unfocused.' 'This proposal remedies those flaws by allowing States and Territories to properly scope and fund hospital preparedness,' it says. HHS referred questions asking for more details on those 'flaws' to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to POLITICO's E&E News by press time. Coordinators who are funded by for the program say it provides critical support to states and territories. 'You're taking down a system that brings multiple agencies together beforehand to respond to disasters, you're cutting down a lot of networking and a lot of preparedness, a lot of training and a lot of resources that we get beforehand to allow us to be able to respond proactively to disasters,' said T.L. Davis, who was the readiness and response coordinator for the Northeast Arkansas Preparedness and Emergency Response Systems until 2022. In June 2021, his office jumped into action when multiple tornadoes ripped through Northeast Arkansas, flattening not one but two nursing homes. Local emergency responders were already swamped with calls, so Davis' coalition sent out an Ambubus, a vehicle that looks like a school bus but is equipped like an ambulance to treat multiple injured people. The Ambubus, which had been purchased with HPP funds, helped evacuate and care for more than 100 patients from the nursing homes. 'If we had not had that HPP funding, we wouldn't have been able to do that, the response times would have been much longer and we could have had casualties,' Davis said. Tom Cotter founded the Health Response Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates resilience in health care systems. He said HPP and the coordinator positions it funds are particularly invaluable in mass-casualty medical events. 'When something happens, you want the system to be able to work together as a whole rather than have disjointed units working on their own in a silo,' Cotter said. 'The Hospital Preparedness Program helps make that happen.' That's what happens in North Carolina during hurricanes. During both Hurricanes Florence and Helene, the Duke Healthcare Preparedness Coalition, funded by HPP, was tasked with running specialty shelters for patients with unique medical needs, like those who require at-home dialysis or ventilators. 'These are people who need 24-hour care, and if we didn't have these shelters, they would have to go to hospitals during disasters when you want to keep the load out of hospitals,' said J. David Marsee, the health care preparedness coordinator for the coalition. 'When we show up, we are working closely with the local agencies to help take that load off.' During disasters, Marsee's coalition relies heavily on volunteer staff from Duke University and its health care system. The university is now 'working through different alternatives' for what could happen if the HPP is defunded, he said. 'We are not sure how well prepared for the next disaster we may be,' Marsee said. Florida Hospital Association President Mary Mayhew said the HPP has been critical to helping train health care groups in her state around hurricane-related evacuations. That was particularly true last fall during Hurricane Michael, when more than 300 health care facilities, including hospitals and nursing homes, had to be evacuated in advance of a storm predicted to cover a large swath of the state. 'We keep getting tested over and over again with different and more complex challenges and this work is foundational to supporting all of the efforts that occur in the midst of a disaster response,' she said.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump's budget proposes steep cuts to NIH, health funding
The White House on Friday revealed President Trump's budget request for fiscal 2026, which includes cutting a quarter of the discretionary funding designated to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In a letter addressed to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought listed out the major discretionary funding changes requested by the Trump administration. The 2026 proposal is seeking to cut $33.3 billion in discretionary funding for HHS, representing a 26.2 percent reduction compared to the fiscal 2025 budget. This includes a $3.6 billion reduction in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an $18 billion reduction for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a $674 million reduction for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Program Management and a $240 million reduction for Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Hospital Preparedness Program. The only health program that gains discretionary funding in the proposal is HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, for which the budget provides $500 million. The budget claims these funds would 'allow the Secretary to tackle nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety across HHS.' In his letter, Vought wrote that the recommended funding levels 'result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.' The reasons cited by the Trump administration for the numerous proposed budget cuts include arguments that the CDC has 'duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs,' citing the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion and the National Center for Environmental Health as examples. At NIH, the recommended cuts include eliminating funding for the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, 'which is replete with [diversity, equity and inclusion] expenditures' per Vought's letter, as well as funding for the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Medicaid, currently the center of a headache for the House GOP as it seeks to find cuts in the budget, will suffer 'no impacts' in its ability to provide benefits despite the quarter of a billion-dollar reduction in discretionary funding being asked for, the proposal claimed. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps households pay for heating and cooling costs, was deemed unnecessary by the Trump administration which argued states already have policies in place preventing utilities from being disconnected in low-income households. Collins signaled Friday she was not impressed by Trump's proposal. 'The President's Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process. This request has come to Congress late, and key details still remain outstanding,' the Maine Republican said in a statement. 'Based on my initial review, however, I have serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research. Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse,' she added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
02-05-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Trump's budget proposes steep cuts to NIH, health funding
The White House on Friday revealed President Trump's budget request for fiscal 2026, which includes cutting a quarter of the discretionary funding designated to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In a letter addressed to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriation Committee, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought listed out the major discretionary funding changes requested by the Trump administration. The 2026 proposal is seeking to cut $33.3 billion in discretionary funding for HHS, representing a 26.2 percent reduction compared to the 2025 fiscal year budget. This includes a $3.6 billion reduction in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an $18 billion reduction for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a $674 million reduction for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Program Management and a $240 million reduction for Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Hospital Preparedness Program. The only health program that gains discretionary funding in the proposal is HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, for which the budget provides $500 million. The budget claims these funds would 'allow the Secretary to tackle nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety across HHS.' In his letter, Vought wrote that the recommended funding levels 'result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.' The reasons cited by the Trump administration for the numerous proposed budget cuts include arguments that the CDC has 'duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs,' citing the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion and National Center for Environmental Health as examples. At NIH, the recommended cuts include eliminating funding for the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, 'which is replete with [diversity, equity and inclusion] expenditures' per Vought's letter, as well as fund for National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Medicaid, currently the center of a headache for the House GOP as it seeks to find cuts in budget, will suffer 'no impacts' in its ability to provide benefits despite the quarter of a billion-dollar reduction in discretionary funding being asked for, the proposal claimed. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps households pay for heating and cooling costs, was deemed unnecessary by the Trump administration which argued states already have policies in place preventing utilities from being disconnected in low-income households. Collins signaled on Friday that she was not impressed by Trump's proposal. 'The President's Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process. This request has come to Congress late, and key details still remain outstanding,' the Maine Republican said in a statement. 'Based on my initial review, however, I have serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research. Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse,' she added.
