Public health has been on the skids for years, perhaps as long as humans needed help to survive. I’m not even sure where it began. I think back to the forever neglect of persons with brain disease (mental illness), disability, and poverty (homelessness, safety, and powerlessness). Neglect, neglect, neglect! Let’s put neglected human need over corporate greed!
I just read an article in the National Geographic depicting that certain epidemics and droughts were thought to have led to the definitive fall of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476. See https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/fall-of-ancient-roman-empire/. I never gave a thought to what public health meant to our human history. Now I understand: it’s everything!
Going back to 2019, the COVID pandemic illustrated how interconnected every aspect of human relations effects public health. Now I understand how economic and social systems shape our survival. It seems that most social systems are dependent upon economic systems. That is, public safety nets.
What I’ve seen since 2019.
These public safety nets have devolved:
- Announcement that the COVID pandemic is over and the end of helpful social programs
- Defunded disease research
- Takeovers of healthcare systems by profit-making organizations that reduces positive outcomes for patients
- Failure to rein in insurance companies that deny or delay care.
- Allowing health care organizations, including long-term care facilities, to understaff, underpay, and neglect patient care which often results in death or severe disability
- Dismanted FEMA
- Dismantled Medicaid
- Dismantled the ACA
- Dismantled NOAA
- Dismantled environmental threats protections.
- Denied health care services for women with morbid results
- Safety net hospitals closed after being purchased by private equity. The system did not provide replacements for these losses.
- Personal protective gear has been denied to healthcare professionals, persons with immunity deficiency, and exasperated disease spread
- Diminished vaccine access for diseases that are preventable
- Understaffed and underpaid first responders
- Many states now allow medically assisted suicide instead of expensive care. Insurance companies, care facilities, and hospitals are surely delighted to dump critically ill, severely disabled, or poor patients – all for profit.
- Guardianship allows facilities to dump patients and strip their autonomy:
https://archive.ph/20251123122805/https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/23/guardianship-chicago-hospitals/https://archive.ph/20251201181231/https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/30/hospital-guardianship-private-chicago-illinois/
Now the Trump administration proposes a 15-80% cut in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The Division of Industrial Hygiene of the U.S. Public Health Service created NIOSH. It develops new knowledge in the field of occupational safety and health and it transfers that knowledge into practice.
Some of the areas NIOSH addresses are: aerosols, aging workers, agriculture, american indian/alaska native workers, animal/livestock hazards, annual review, artificial intelligence, asthma, aviation, back injury, black lung, bloodborne pathogens, cancer, cannabis, cardiovascular disease, chemicals, cold stress, commercial fishing, communication, construction, COVID-19, cross cultural communication, dermal exposure, drugs, ebola, economics, education and research centers, electrical safety, emergency response/public sector, engineering control, engineers, environment, epidemiology, ergonomics, exposure, falls, fatigue, fire-fighting, fishing, food service, forestry, fungal disease, future of work and OSH, healthcare, healthy work design, hearing loss, heat stress, history, holiday themes, HRQOL, hydraulic fracturing, impairment, infectious disease resources, influenza, international, landscaping, law enforcement, lead, lone work, manufacturing, manufacturing Mondays series, media, mental health, mining, motor vehicle safety, musculoskeletal disorders, nanotechnology, national occupational research agenda, needlestick prevention, NIOSH-funded research, nonstandard work arrangements, observances, occupational health equity, occupational medicine, oil and gas, opioids, outdoor work, partnership, personal protective equipment, physical activity, policy and programs, prevention through design, prioritizing research, recycling, reproductive health, research to practice r2p, researcher spotlights, respirators, respiratory health, risk assessment, robotics, safety, safety and health data, sensors, service sector, shift work, silica, sleep, small business, smoking, social determinants of health, spanish translations, sports and entertainment, strategic foresight, stress, struck-by injuries, student training, substance use disorder, suicide, surveillance, synthetic biology, systematic review, take home exposures, teachers/school workers, technology, temporary/contingent workers, total worker health, training, translations (other than spanish), transportation, uncategorized, veterinarians, violence, wearable technologies, welding, well-being, wholesale and retail trade, women, work schedules, workers’ compensation, workplace medical mystery, workplace supported recovery, world trade center health program, and young workers.
The Trump administration is playing with fire!
See this article: https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/12/29/why-gutting-this-agency-amounts-to-playing-with-fire/.
There are more. What have you found?
Kathy Powers is a lifetime Chicagoan. At 50, Kathy speaks out as the voice of the people. She became a revolutionary activist whose lifelong fight raises unheard voices. She is the Health Care Desk on the People’s Tribune Editorial Board.
I forgot the spread of MPOX that is stopped by vaccination. Apologies to MPOX sufferers.