Guidance for journalists reporting on how the U.S. public health system is changing

By Dené K. Dryden, Firearm Violence Reporting Fellow

As federal public health funding and its workforce face sweeping changes, a panel at Health Journalism 2025 discussed the future of the United States' broad public health system - an infrastructure that, when working properly, is often invisible.

Quang "Q" Dang, executive director of the Network for Public Health Law, shared an exercise he used when lecturing at California State University. He would ask his students to list everything in their day touched by public health including clean, fluoridated tap water they drink and the pasteurized milk in the fridge.

"It highlights … that public health is all around us," Dang said. "It highlights that public health is often invisible - many of the things that we see as being hallmarks of our modern comforts are public health."

Public health infrastructure goes far beyond public health departments, said Dr. Julie Morita, president and CEO of the Joyce Foundation. Health care systems, community organizations, nonprofits and other government arms, such as public works, also play critical roles.

Morita added that philanthropy alone cannot fill those emerging gaps in funding.

Thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employees have been laid off, and the pandemic-era funding to state and local health departments was rescinded under the second Trump administration. Dr. Joseph Kanter, CEO of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, warned that the effects of the funding cuts might not be immediately apparent.

"You can chip away at the foundation of a bridge and not know it until that thing falls down," Kanter said.

Panelists noted that organizations such as the Impact Project are tracking the various changes to public health funding at the national level. However, Kanter said, there is no comprehensive, official list of the impacts - especially as active court cases have left some cuts in flux.

"One thing that we tell a lot of our partners is that in these kind of overwhelming times, with so much information, if you can just even focus on one thing," Dang advised, "you don't have to address every story or every issue, if you can just get one thing out there."

Journalists have an opportunity to explain how recent actions by HHS and its leaders break away from traditional processes. Morita cited as example: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s May 27 announcement that the COVID vaccine would be removed from the vaccine schedule for healthy children and pregnant women. Morita said this move bypassed the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which has long reviewed the latest scientific evidence to guide vaccine administration.

"The whole bypassing of the process really undermines the scientific and evidence-based approaches that have been used for decades to ensure that public immunizations are among the U.S.'s top public health accomplishments," said Morita, a pediatrician who previously served on the committee. "It's very disturbing to me."

Additional advice from the panelists

• Talk to local health departments, physicians and disease survivor or awareness groups about the effects of funding cuts and layoffs.
• Extend grace to current or former public health workers who might be hesitant to speak out because of employment concerns.
• Watch state governments to see if leaders push back against the federal government's direction, or if they adopt similar stances.
• Report on incongruencies between the stated goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement and the actions, such as funding cuts, that are made.

Dené K. Dryden is the health reporter for the Post Bulletin in Rochester, Minn.