On a sunny weekday in Atlanta, a small crowd of people gathered for a rally outside of a labor union headquarters building.<\/p>\n
The event, put together by Atlanta-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams<\/a>, was attended mostly by union members and recently fired federal workers, including Ryan Sloane.<\/p>\n \u201cI was fired by an anonymous email at 9 p.m. in the middle of a holiday weekend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sloane is still seeking reinstatement, but he feels he no longer has much to lose by speaking out.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m only here today because they cannot fire me twice,\u201d Sloane said.<\/p>\n When he received his termination notice, he was a few months into a job as a public affairs specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n At the CDC, his days were spent updating far-flung local TV, radio, and newspaper journalists about threats such as seasonal flu, measles, and food safety in their communities.<\/p>\n A judge has ordered the reinstatement<\/a> of some fired federal employees, at least temporarily. But their jobs are still on the line.<\/p>\n Sloane said his former colleagues at the CDC whose jobs aren\u2019t yet in limbo are scared.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are terrified that their life\u2019s work is going to be deleted from servers and not backed up because it does not comport with the ideologies of the new administration,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one is benefiting from this.\u201d<\/p>\n From the end of January to mid-February, the Trump administration took offline<\/a> some CDC webpages and froze external communications, including its widely read Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report<\/a> epidemiological digest.<\/p>\n The webpages that were removed included CDC public health reports, datasets, and guidance on infectious diseases and sexual health. After a court order, some agency information<\/a> was restored, at least for now.<\/p>\n But even temporary disruptions to CDC communications could have big ripple effects.<\/p>\n It is information that state and local health departments, hospitals, university researchers, and others rely on to help them respond to outbreaks.<\/p>\n \u201cCDC is there to provide technical information, provide funding, provide support, but it\u2019s a collaborative work, working together to keep Americans safe,\u201d said former CDC Director Tom Frieden, who headed the agency from 2009 to 2017. He is now president and CEO of the nonprofit organization Resolve to Save Lives<\/a>. \u201cIn this country, we have a patchwork or network of public health. It\u2019s really up to the local, city, and state health departments to get the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n City and state health agencies also need the collaboration of CDC experts to help investigate local disease outbreaks and other threats to public health.<\/p>\n A clinician who has worked at the agency for more than two decades pointed to the CDC\u2019s singular ability to send medical supplies and deploy highly specialized teams of scientists to help local communities identify and contain outbreaks. KFF Health News agreed not to use the clinician\u2019s name because she fears she will be fired for airing these views publicly.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of them are assigned to state and local health departments, so really even beyond individual positions, any funding cuts that the agency takes are also passed on to state and local health departments,\u201d the clinician said. \u201cA lot of their budget comes from federal money as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration has attempted to terminate hundreds of employees from the CDC alone, along with hundreds more workers at the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies with a U.S. health and safety role.<\/p>\n Many public health and science researchers are concerned about the cuts\u2019 impacts on the nation\u2019s ability to respond to threats \u2014 and about whether state and local public health departments will be able to keep communities healthy without the CDC\u2019s partnership.<\/p>\n Billionaire Elon Musk has said his Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> intends to keep cutting federal agencies\u2019 budgets and staff, targeting what it calls \u201cfraud.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnytime someone gets fired, it\u2019s always difficult. But with $36 trillion in debt, we have to reduce the size of the federal government,\u201d Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told WABE<\/a> during a March visit to the Georgia State Capitol.<\/p>\n Her district<\/a> includes parts of suburban Atlanta about 30 miles from CDC headquarters.<\/p>\n Greene also chairs a House subcommittee also called \u201cDOGE,\u201d for \u201cDelivering on Government Efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFortunately, with all the investments that are being brought back into the country under President Trump, I really hope that those federal workers are able to find new jobs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She did not comment on whether local public health departments around the country would be able to work efficiently without the support of CDC experts who have been terminated.<\/p>\n But many U.S. public health experts are expressing concern.<\/p>\n The CDC has long been a key training ground for the next generation of U.S. public health researchers.<\/p>\n Emory University epidemiology professor Patrick Sullivan<\/a> was one of them earlier in his career. The HIV expert previously worked at the CDC for about 15 years.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started working in HIV prevention at CDC in the early 1990s, we didn\u2019t have the treatments that essentially allowed people living with HIV to have a full, healthy, normal lifespan,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the treatments that essentially allowed people living with HIV to have a test that people could take home to test themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Sullivan said the progress he has seen over the last several decades gave him optimism, and that advances in HIV treatment and prevention are a great example of the importance of federal support for public health work.<\/p>\n \u201cDiscovery science and pharmacy science really have given us the tools that we need to end the HIV epidemic in the United States,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But, to have those scientific tools without adequate public health staff or funding to use them, he said, will cost American lives.<\/p>\n This article is from a partnership that includes <\/em>WABE<\/a>, NPR<\/a>, and KFF Health News.<\/em><\/p>\n\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\nUSE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n