Vaccine clinics canceled, health jobs cut as feds rescind grants to Washington state

Aimee Do spent months preparing for a large health clinic at a small resource center called Mercy House in Mountlake Terrace. The building is a renovated rectory next to St. Pius X Catholic church and school, and she's the administrator and liaison.

Do put the word out to 7,000 people in five or six surrounding parishes via “FlockNote,” St. Pius' mass-texting tool. She ordered canopies for potential rain, lunches for volunteers and lollipops for kids.

Vaccination clinics like these usually attract Spanish-speaking families whose insurance might not cover flu, mpox or childhood vaccines schools require.

“People came to me and said they would take their children, or they would take their parents, their mother, their sister, brother,” Do said.

Do was expecting a van of nurses and health workers to show up as part of a program called “Care-a-Van” (also called “caravana de salud”), but she got word this week they wouldn’t be coming.

Care-A-Van was part of a Covid-era grant which was rescinded by the federal government, and events from Seattle to Yakima County were abruptly canceled in the last few days.

Federal cuts are beginning to be felt in Washington state clinics, hospitals, and public health departments. The Centers for Disease Control immediately ended $130 million in “pandemic-related” grants this week, terminating jobs for over 200 employees at the state Department of Health, and potentially more at local health authorities, tribal clinics and community organizations.

It’s part of a plan by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to overhaul the federal health department and gut its spending to make it more efficient. Just on the federal level, some 10,000 jobs are on the chopping block – at the CDC, FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and more.

“We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies, while preserving their core functions, by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA,” Kennedy said in a video posted on X. “We’re going to consolidate all these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer, and the American patient.”

HHS’ media line did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Washington state's layoffs.

Kennedy has been particularly skeptical of vaccines’ efficacy. His department has postponed or canceled independent federal vaccine advisory committees, terminated research on vaccines, and reportedly forced the top vaccine regulator to quit his job.

Those cuts and more are just beginning to be felt in Washington state. Some effects are small, like funding for two staff who help low-income people sign up for Apple Health, SNAP or WIC benefits.

Others are bigger, like Valley Medical Center announcing it’s laying off over a hundred non-medical staff due to non-renewal of a Medicaid program (the hospital insists those cuts won’t affect patients).

The CDC cuts alone have Seattle and King County’s public health department “reeling,” said Dr. Faisal Khan, after a 3 a.m. email from feds on Monday told his staff another $3 million in local funds had been terminated. Most of the staff funded by those grants work for community organizations, a spokesperson wrote, doing things like home visits for asthma prevention.

The community will be sicker because of the losses, public health officials say.

“We have just shot ourselves in both feet at the same time,” Khan said in a press conference Friday. “We are bewildered about what is going on.”

Other organizations, such as University of Washington, don't yet have a handle on the full scale and impact of the cuts, because the funding flows through the state Department of Health. A UW spokesperson said an early example they're seeing is that the feds are pulling their share of funding for contagious disease notification -- work that started with WA Notify and WA Verify apps, but was expanding to measles, tuberculosis, foodborne illness outbreaks and food recalls.

When the state Department of Health announced the cancellation of all Care-A-Van events on Facebook, hundreds of comments poured in.

“This is such a ridiculous decision. I hope for some sort of funding miracle,” one wrote. Another said, “this is sad, but unfortunately these Covid grants can't continue forever.”

Still another said it's “good news for communities that don't subscribe to [the state Department of Health]'s vaccines propaganda,” or that the country is “36 TRILLION dollars in debt. Economic collapse or spending cuts.”

Care-A-Van events dispensing Covid, flu, Mpox and childhood vaccines were scheduled at a free tax prep event in Yakima County, a women’s shelter in Seattle, and a Sunnyside school district event, according to a now-deleted webpage on the state Department of Health’s website.

Nurses at the events also provided naloxone and blood pressure or glucose screenings, said Mary Wahl, who works for Catholic Community Services and helped plan the Mercy House event that was cancelled. She’s planned several other events with Care-A-Van, and said they have saved lives.

“At every event, they find someone who has dangerously high blood pressure or extremely high glucose, and they have to do a medical referral,” Wahl said. “They've even sent people to urgent care immediately.”