Public Health Victories Depend on Local and National Partnerships
By Kelly Jordan
TheTrump Administration shared its discretionary budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 on May 2. The plan outlines the administration’s intentions to cut government spending across the board, which includes a 40% decrease in funding for the National Institutes of Health and 39% decrease to the CDC’s funding.
The section of the proposal focused on the CDC says, “The Budget eliminates duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs, including: the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; National Center for Environmental Health; National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; the Global Health Center; Public Health Preparedness and Response, which can be conducted more effectively by States; and the Preventive Health and Human Services Block Grant, the purposes for which can be best funded by States.”
Public health advocates and news outlets have raised the alarm for what these cuts in the “skinny budget" could mean for science and human health. A recent statement put out by the Association for Schools and Programs of Public Health reads, “ASPPH expresses deep concern over the proposed funding reductions and structural changes, which risk undermining decades of progress in public health, biomedical research, and global health collaboration.”
It should be noted that this is still just a proposal. It has not yet been put into action. It is also unclear at this point how the activities these offices currently provide would be handled at the state level and/or within the newly created Administration for a Healthy America. It is also uncertain how current funding or monitoring efforts would be facilitated if offices are downsized or eliminated.
What is obvious is the tremendous benefit these centers provide to people in cities and towns across the country, including Atlanta.
“We always talk about public health’s aim of serving the greatest number of people. That’s absolutely true,” says Dani Fallin, PhD, dean of the Rollins School of Public Health. “But I think we sometimes forget to highlight the individual stories of public health. The health of our children, our parents, our friends, and neighbors is protected because of public health actions. That’s what we are seeing every day at the community level in Atlanta, across the state, and at the national level. These are transformative moments that speak to the power of what we can achieve with a skilled workforce, integrated communication and collaboration at the federal and local levels, and engaged local communities.”
Local Health Success Stories Are All Around
Until things go wrong, public health activities tend to occur in the background. Local public health success stories are part of this narrative and occur all the time. They are the wins of a lead-free school, a company without workplace injuries, or a community with high vaccination rates.
States don’t operate in a vacuum. Neither do divisions within federal agencies. They are interconnected and were designed to complement one another. Collaboration and integration are crucial ingredients to these everyday achievements. Federal divisions with broad or even vague-sounding names, like the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion or the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control have a hand in projects across the country, including many in Georgia. The following are a small handful of examples.
Helping Moms and Babies Thrive
When you look at a single data set, it can be helpful, but it lacks context. When placed against a national dataset, you can see more patterns and problems emerge. That’s the incredible function that the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) serves.
This system is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Division of Reproductive Health, which provides technical and financial support to state health departments so they can collect details about pregnancy and birth experiences. Questionnaires completed by birthing people after live births then provide insights into national trends, problem areas that need focus, and populations that may be facing hardships.
Thanks to this standardized system for collecting and reporting data, officials have been able to identify community-specific issues in places around the country. In Georgia, for instance, researchers were able to utilize PRAMS data to see why some pregnant women in the state weren’t getting flu vaccines. Drilling down into data about communities–provided by people in those communities—also helps determine where there’s the most need and can better inform how money is spent. This in turn, saves money and protects moms and babies.
Supporting Children’s Hospitals, Helping Sick Kids
Medicaid benefits a diverse set of people across the country. Qualifications vary by state and help millions of Americans access life-saving care. More than 37 million American kids are on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. That’s about 50% of all children in the United States. This coverage gives them access to preventive care (like pediatrician check-ups) and more serious treatments, like for kids with cancer.
America’s pediatric hospitals rely on Medicaid payments to help fund their operations. This is likely the case for the pediatric hospital in your area. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, a leading pediatric hospital in the Southeast, sees more than 1 million children per year. It’s an example of a place that sees children on Medicaid and provides life-saving care.
Keeping Georgia’s Air and Water Safe and Clean
The Environmental Protection Agency is plugged in with states and counties across the nation and helps to set and monitor clean air and water standards and evaluate environmental factors that could negatively impact human health. EPA’s activities aren’t limited to examining and monitoring natural features like land or waterways, it also includes setting standards and supporting monitoring and response in case of an emergency for contamination issues (like lead found in the drinking water of a school, for instance).
Water safety at Georgia's beaches has been supported through the BEACH Act, which is administered by the EPA. Through this national funding, states like Georgia have the resources to collect and analyze water samples, track and manage water safety databases, and prepare community alerts so people are aware when it’s unsafe to swim in an area.
EPA also conducts research in states across the country, including Georgia, around sites and resources that could directly impact community health. Like 24 other states, Georgia uses the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System, administered through EPA’s Office of Research and Development, to determine air quality levels in an area. This information helps inform communities (including daycares) when air quality levels may be harmful for at-risk groups, like infants, small children, pregnant people, older adults, and people with chronic conditions.
Preventing Injuries and Overdoses
In Georgia, one person experiences an injury every 15 minutes. Since 1993, Emory’s Injury Prevention Research Center has been conducting research, leading educational outreach efforts, and influencing policy that works to prevent injuries. The center is one of 11 Injury Control Research Centers in the country funded by the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. It focuses specifically on preventing injuries and deaths among people in Georgia and the Southeast. There are projects in progress that are looking to understand a range of topics that impact Georgians, including:
- A statewide look at overdose deaths and over-prescribing of opioids
- Work to develop guidance for violence screenings and intervention programs to help trans people in Atlanta
- Research to understand barriers people in Atlanta face when accessing overdose prevention programs
- And more.
Public Engagement is Critical for Public Health
These examples barely scratch the surface of the ways public health touches our daily lives. Disruptions to standardized systems and cuts at the national level create bottlenecks that impact projects at the local level, which is where the people are. Continued success requires constant effort.
The public health workforce will always need skilled workers at the ready, even in times when jobs are harder to come by. Those currently working in public health or studying it are doing critical work all the time, but especially now.
