Iowa health officials say they were already in the process of ending certain COVID-19 pandemic response programming when they were alerted this week that its federal funding would be cut.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials announced Tuesday that they are cutting $11.4 billion in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID funding going to state and community health departments.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement to NBC News, which first reported the story. "HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again."
Alex Murphy, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement Friday that the agency was alerted to the change this week, but it had already planned for the end of the American Rescue Plan Act funding.
"The funding that has been rescinded was temporary COVID-era funding that we were aware would be ending soon — mostly by June 30, 2025," he said. "Because of that, Iowa HHS had already planned to wind down much of this programming."
Murphy did not say how much funding in Iowa the cut would affect, but said the funding streams affected include:
- Substance abuse prevention and treatment
- Community mental health services
- COVID health disparities
- Epidemiology and laboratory capacity
- Immunization funding
A spokesperson for Gov. Kim Reynolds did not respond to IPR's requests for comment.
Iowa officials' reaction to the news differed from those in some of Iowa's neighboring states.
Minnesota state health commissioner Brooke Cunningham called the cuts "sudden and unexpected."
“It will take time to figure out all of the impacts of this action, but these cuts are a tremendous loss — made worse by the uncertainty and chaos that our federal partners have introduced into this process," she said in a statement.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, called the move "reckless" and said he would look into legal action to stop the move, according to the Wausau Pilot & Review.
The cuts come the same week that federal HHS officials announced they plan to cut 20,000 jobs as part of a "major restructuring" of the department.
Lina Tucker Reinders, the executive director of the Iowa Public Health Association, said funding is needed to repair public health infrastructure issues exposed by the pandemic, "like data tracking systems, like contact tracing, like investments in other hospital systems or other infrastructure that we need to manage health crises."
Tucker Reinders is concerned cuts to public health funding could leave the state ill-equipped to deal with other disease outbreaks amid a severe flu season and measles outbreaks in other parts of the country. She said public health doesn't work in "silos."
"When we pull back an investment, for example, in infectious disease to concentrate on chronic disease, we are losing ground on our preparedness for the next outbreak," she said.
