Nonprofit of fired HHS workers advocates for better public health policy, change on a federal level

Typically at this time of the year, Aryn Backus would be working on the coming year’s Tips From Former Smokers campaign and publishing the next youth tobacco survey in her role as a health communications specialist at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. Abby Tighe, a public health advisor at the Division of Overdose Prevention, would be working with grantees to help prepare for the upcoming budget year and determine how they want to spend their money.

Instead, both are currently unemployed after sweeping layoffs earlier this year ultimately left 10,000 staffers across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), FDA, and CDC jobless.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve been waiting for their next opportunity to come to them. Backus, who is a deputy executive director at the National Public Health Coalition (NPHC), and Tighe, who is an executive director with the nonprofit, have been busy advocating for their former colleagues and to reinforce public health’s importance in society.

“Public health has kind of a PR problem,” Tighe said. “We want to help the American public and our policymakers understand why we need public health and why the infrastructure is so critical.”

Not resting on laurels. According to Tighe, the organization’s goals are threefold: “reduce the damage that’s being done” at HHS, build up support for public health via policymakers so the public better understands its impact on their lives, and rebuild a public health infrastructure that serves everyone.

NPHC has a few initiatives underway to achieve this, including Fired but Fighting, the Save HHS project, and the CDC Data Project.

Fired but Fighting shares information about what’s going on at HHS via newsletters covering major moments from the past year, such as the impending budget cuts, claims that Tylenol use is linked to autism, and the government shutdown. Each newsletter provides additional resources including upcoming events, job and networking opportunities, and ways former staffers can get involved, like survey participation and petitions.

Save HHS has a straightforward goal, as the large, red header proclaims on its site: “It’s time for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign.” A Sept. 3 letter calls on Congress to remove the HHS secretary if he refuses to leave his post and appoint someone “whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science.”

The CDC Data Project tracks all eliminated CDC programs and staff (one-third of its civil service workforce has been reduced so far since January 2024, according to the collected data).

It also follows grant money states have historically relied on that could be lost if the Trump administration’s 2026 budget request passes. For instance, if it were to go through, the group’s data shows the CDC’s budget would be cut by 54% from $9.3 billion to $4.2 billion.

Public health for the public good. As a result of its advocacy efforts—at least partially, Backus said—there has been progress. Fired workers who were researching childhood lead exposure were brought back, and Alzheimer’s research funding got added back into the budget (though the team working on that was not brought back).

Tighe said the group has also forged bipartisan relationships to “start making the case for public health” and “bridge that gap.” NPHC also has an initiative to bring fired federal workers into political campaigns and staffing positions to further that goal, she added.

“Something we noticed really early on in our congressional outreach is that a lot of the staffers we talked to knew everything about Medicaid and Medicare,” Tighe said, but when it came to the CDC, they didn’t “really understand how that money flows down into their communities.”

Ultimately, Tighe said, the people involved in NPHC and its initiatives are “public service-oriented” and care deeply about ensuring public health is prioritized.

“I would love to go back to CDC,” she said. “Not right now, but maybe in five, 10 years once we’ve been able to build something that is better than the previous thing that we had.”