White House mandates move away from overdose prevention in US health programs

A child receives an immunization in Florida. Critics say Trump administration move could also signal attack on vaccination requirements at schools. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images View image in fullscreen A child receives an immunization in Florida. Critics say Trump administration move could also signal attack on vaccination requirements at schools. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images White House mandates move away from overdose prevention in US health programs Experts say move signals greater political interference into public health and will exacerbate opioid overdose crisis Health programs receiving federal funding must agree within days to new priorities from the Trump administration , including a focus on “parental authority” in education and a move away from proven overdose-prevention methods like harm reduction, suggesting greater political control over public health. The new priorities will likely affect progress against the opioid crisis , and they could signal an attack on vaccination requirements at schools, which are set at the state and local level. The priorities may also weaponize public health to quash “public disorder.” The move “absolutely” appears to signal greater political interference into public health, said Nabarun Dasgupta, a street drug researcher and senior scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Injury Prevention Research Center. How the Trump White House works against itself in its efforts to prevent overdoses Read more “This is a warm-up. This is a warning shot,” he said. The move appears to be a “prelude” to imposing similar restrictions of other kinds of federal funding, such as direct service provision, he added. Some of the new policies “are in tension with public health” and would undermine that work, including “prioritizing parental control over, potentially, children’s health and community health”, said Dorit Reiss, a vaccines expert and professor at UC Law San Francisco. “Similarly, housing programs and harm reduction programs save lives and promote health,” she said. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) informed health programs at the state, territorial, tribal and local level on Wednesday that they must agree to a list of the CDC’s priorities within five business days, or by 1 July. The notice did not come from the program staff at the CDC, who were unaware of the new requirement, according to a source familiar with the memo. It’s not clear whether all state, territorial, tribal and local programs received the notice. Programs focused on immunizations, HIV, hepatitis and tobacco did. While this requirement was not explicitly tied to funding, the grant note makes reference to a previous statement from the CDC that funding may be canceled if programs do not comply with the agency’s terms. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the memo by publication time. The new priorities include “parental authori