CDC injury prevention team faced big cuts and ended up critical work: shots

Before they were fired, the employees of the centers wanted to start a new data system for the control and prevention of diseases to improve the way the US conceals pursued.

They planned to publish updated guidelines for the diagnosis of traumatic brain injuries in children and to publish new knowledge about drowning according to natural disasters. They combed the web for suicide data to predict trends and examine changes in the violation of people during the car accident.

All of this came to a standstill, as health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed layoffs to the Department of Health and Human Services this month.

According to researchers, supporters and five former employees, a large part of the federal workforce, whose jobs were removed.

NPR does not pass on its names because they are still on administrative leave and are not authorized to speak to the press.

Whole teams in the CDC injury center, which focused on motor vehicle accidents, child abuse, Rape prevention and education, Drown, traumatic brain injuries, older people, and other problems have been eliminated.

“A large part of the work we do is picked up by anyone else,” says a senior health scientist who has lost her job, NPR.

Sharon GilmartinTheir non-profit Safe States Alliance works closely with CDC and state health departments, knows of more than 200 positions that were eliminated in the CDC Injury Center.

And while some areas, such as the distribution of overdosing prevention and a branch that focused on suicide, were largely spared, they are now lacking technical support to carry out some of their work.

The researchers warn that the peeler endanger the ability of the federal government to systematically pursue injuries – the most common cause of death in the United States for people under the age of 45.

“One of my concerns is that we will not have this comprehensive surveillance system,” says Christian RexingExecutive Director of To knowA non -profit organization for injuries and violence.

“We won’t know what kills us and that is very scary.”

For example, the entire branch that was commissioned to analyze data for the Injury Center and the maintenance of a key database was released, so that according to interviews with several former CDC employees, the systems remained largely unattended.

“This is a critical work that was invisible at such low costs with such a high return and a large part of it,” says Beth Moracco, which heads the research center for preventing UNC injuries.

In an e-mail declaration, HHS informed NPR that “critical CDC programs as part of the Vision of Secretary Kennedy are continued to optimize HHS in order to serve the American people better, including the important work that contributes to researching injuries and violence prevention as well as behavioral and substance damage prevention.”

But supporters like Gilmartin are not exactly clear how this will happen when scientists and experts in the federal government have been released with decades of experience.

Moracco warns that data sets are scattered into injuries and violence in the entire federal government and for researchers and state health officers who rely on this central source of information are not available to control and prevent top killers such as overdoses, motor vehicle accidents.

And in some cases, data is not collected at all.

Last week, the CDC closed a long-term initiative, which was based on a broad picture of injuries across the country that were collected on Erh soundpasting of around 100 hospitals.

The national surveillance system for electronic injuries was based on contractors that thousands of thousands of Are records And categorize according to the cause, including motor vehicle accidents, unwanted drug events, firearms, drown, poisoning, dog bites.

This specific data source was unique because it does not have real -time monitoring not fatal injuries and why and how the injury occurred, which was not carried out elsewhere in the federal government.

In a statement, the consumer product security commission, which had teamed up with the CDC on the system, shared NPR that you would continue to collect data about the products in connection with products, but would stop collecting all other data due to CDC employees.

Although the Trump administration has made no secret about its intentions to reduce and redesign the federal health authorities, many in the field of violation and violence prevention did not expect their corner of the CDC so hard.

“There is nothing partisan of injuries,” says Dr. Mark Rosenberg, the first director of the CDC injury center, which was founded in the early 1990s.

“These are our children Who is shot, our children who drown, our children who are abused and neglected, “he says.

Over the years, the CDC Center was significantly contributed to promoting interventions for public health such as better airbags and vehicle design, smoke detectors and bicycle helmets. It is behind a program for public health was adopted From high school sports programs across the country.

The scope of the work is incredibly wide and varied. Certain areas, especially gun violence, are politically burdened. The underlying premise, explains Rosenberg, is based on the conviction that injuries should be solved as public health problems rather than accidents.

“One of the injury centers’ jobs was to help people understand that they can predict them and they can prevent them, ”he says.

Last year, the agency’s budget was over 700 million US dollars. The majority of his financing goes directly to state health departments, a network of research centers at universities and community organizations. For example, the YMCA, which runs a drown prevention program, says that a large part of this work may be in danger.

Since the employees who managed these external financing currents have been released, Gilmartin also expects that this money will dry out.

“There is a direct border between federal employees and the states and communities that they serve, “she says.” We cut that. “

Rexing says that these cuts will have a great wavy effect. The CDC has been the organization troop and a great sponsor for the prevention of injuries for many years.

“I see it as a collapse in this area,” says Rexing, “the development of the field. The knowledge that we already have to solve these really complex problems.”

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