US DHHS canceled nearly $12 billion in funding to state and local health departments

Nebraska Health Districts are assessing how much money they might lose after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services canceled $11.4 billion worth of federal grants to state and local health departments this week, citing the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The grants had been scheduled to run through September. In a statement to National Public Radio, DHHS officials said “the COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

Officials with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services could not be reached for comment about the scope of the cuts in the state, but Douglas County Health Director Lindsay Huse said the amount of funding being pulled from her department is just shy of $1 million.

“While this is a significant amount of money, we managed to avoid the worst impacts,” Huse said. “Our rural health departments that have fewer revenue opportunities than we do are definitely feeling this cut in a significant way.”

The cuts will affect funding to a project aimed at improving mental health of at-risk youths, an issue that was greatly highlighted by the stresses of the pandemic, and a roughly $900,000 grant intended to expand the infrastructure and capacity for epidemiology and outbreak response. This grant was so new that, according to Huse, the department had not allocated or spent any of it.

On the other side of the state, officials at the Panhandle Public Health District said they expect to lose about $400,000 in funding.

Jessica Davies, the department’s director, said that while the funds were originally meant for COVID response during the pandemic, they were also used for overall vaccination efforts and infectious disease surveillance.

“We're currently assessing what that will look like in terms of our continuity and our capacity,” Davies said. “Overall, we just know that it's going to weaken our ability to respond effectively to emerging public health threats and to services.”

In September 2023, Regional West Health Services transferred immunization services to Panhandle Public Health District, meaning it became the place for people to get their vaccines.

"(The funding cut) severely undermines our ability to sustain essential public health services,” Davies said. “It's very concerning to us that we are losing these funds sooner than expected, and overall, for the others, for continuity.”

Huse said that despite avoiding the worst impact, her department is not out of the woods yet.

“It does add levels of complexity to determining how we can get the work done that we know the community expects from us,” Huse said.