“Where is our money?” CDC subsidy finance is moving so there are slowly redundant place

Health departments throughout the country have noticed that something strange is happening with financing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: it is not appearing on schedule and there has been no communication about why.

Federal Public Health Agency Doles Out Out Most of the money It receives from the congress to national and local health departments, which then have a contract with local organizations. That is how public health work is financed in the US

According to two CDC employees with knowledge of the budget of the agency, the CDC must still receive its full financing for the tax year of 2025. NPR agreed not to mention the employees because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

Both CDC employees say that the financing is now months late, and it will soon be too late to distribute the subsidies from the agency that wait for local health departments. In the meantime, the CDC is active with only 30 days of financing at the same time. The employees say that this amounts to confiscating the financing of the agency. One of them called it ‘dissolution by slowness’.

The Ministry of Health and Human Services did not answer NPR’s questions for this story or responded to a request for comments on that characterization.

A major change compared to the usual process

“Most state health departments receive the majority of their FBI financing – In the case of Alabama we get more than two -thirds of our financing of federal subsidies, mainly CDC,” we say Dr. Scott HarrisWho runs the health department of Alabama and is the president of the Association of State and Territorial Health officials. “Less than 10% of our money comes from state dollars.”

“Nothing can really happen if we don’t know that we are going to get the money – if there is no notification of award,” Harris explains.

This year the Award of the Award CDC simply does not arrive on schedule. “One of our cardiovascular stock exchanges, for example, is at the end of this month,” he says “we have no grant notification, so it is really risky for us to incur a number of costs in the coming weeks that work in this program, not knowing whether we have the opportunity to be repaid back.”

Harris says he has heard of state health departments throughout the country that are in the same situation with CDC financing that is mysteriously delayed.

Subsidies with regard to HIV prevention work in many states went without information about future financing at the end of May. In Ohio that meant the HIV-Hotel of the State and the delivery of free test-at-home kits abruptly stopped. The San Antonio AIDS Foundation had to do that Pause his test services. And in Charlotte, North Carolina, the financing delays have led to job losses in the local health department, explains Mecklenburg County Health Commissioner Raynard Washington.

“The majority of those six people we sent home at the beginning of June were specialist staff of the disease -oriented – contacting tracers for HIV, syphilis and other STDs,” says Washington, referring to sexually transmitted infections.

“The result on the spot is that our other employees we have that work, have to take on more workload, and then we often find out,” he says. Being behind behind being able to mean that people who may have been exposed to something, do not know, he adds. “The ultimate risk is that they expose other people and then the chain will continue from there to grow.”

Financing for more subsidies will end soon, says Dr. Philip HuangDirector of Dallas County Health and Human Services in Texas. Huang says that the Ministry of Health has simply warned them that if they do not receive notifications of award for some immunization and emergency paraple grants, they must pause the activities that are financed by those subsidies.

“[That] Is extremely painful for us because we have 60 employees about those subsidies and important financing that are affected, “he says.

Washington adds that North Carolina has not received a new notification from Award for the Breast and cervical screening program or.

The CDC works with a monthly budget “Eyedropper”

In March, President Trump signed a continuous resolution for the tax year 2025, including $ 9 billion for the CDC.

“Once [a budget] is hired and signed by the president, there is always a delay, “one of the CDC employees who spoke with NPR who is a senior leader at the agency. There is a” distribution “process to give each desk its money, which usually takes between 45 and 60 days.

During this period, to be able to make the payroll and keep track of regularly, the CDC will get money in steps of 30 days.

This year? “Forty-five days arrived and went. Sixty days came and went, more and more time came and did not go, not information,” explains the CDC Senior Leader. “We keep asking – where is our money? Where is the money that is approved by the congress?”

Without a pot of money to distribute to different centers and divisions, the CDC cannot send the notification of prices that must be able to continue national and local health departments and know that they are reimbursed for it.

Month after month of financing in steps of 30 days is when receiving money is “with an Eyedropper”, the senior leader adds.

HHS did not answer NPR questions about the reasons for these financing delays on the CDC per publication time.

The employees of the CDC say that they no longer have time to be able to spend the 2025 funds of the office before the end of the tax year in September because of all the steps involved in obtaining the door.

“The money simply does not flow from one or the other – people should actually do the manual work of connecting the funds that are provided on the actual accounts at the correct levels,” explains the other CDC employee.

“If they can delay until the end of September, it is,” the employee adds. “Those projects will not happen. That money goes back to Treasury.”

That is why both CDC employees who have spoken with NPR say that this amounts to seizing the financing of the agency.

“At the moment it is absolutely our assumption that it is deliberately done to stop us,” says the senior leader.

HHS did not respond to a request for comments on that characterization.

HIV funds showed up late, but the uncertainty continues to exist

This week, state health departments received word that the End the HIV epidemic Subsidies that expired at the end of May were finally awarded.

There was no explanation for the delay, says Washington, the health commissioner in Charlotte, NC

“Now I have to find out if the staff we have fired are willing to get back to work,” he says. “If they are not prepared, we must start taking on, we have to train – we have lost months of work because of administrative delays.”

And the delays continue, he says. There has been no communication about what could happen to the many subsidies that end on Monday, since June ends. “During this experience we just told:” We have no answers, “he says.” That is the difficult part if you try to plan. “

Harris van Alabama agrees. “We have to be paid to do these things, whether it is tobacco prevention or diabetes work or readyness of public health or whatever it is,” he says. “We can’t really do it without the financing.”