Howard Dean: Slashing public health funding is a national security disaster in the making

Federal and state government officials are axing public health funding—and justifying the cuts with appeals to fiscal responsibility.

But this slash-and-burn approach is enormously shortsighted. Every dollar “saved” now will cost us far more—in both dollars and lives—when the next health emergency inevitably hits.

Americans know the toll an infectious disease outbreak can take. We just lived through one. COVID-19 killed over 1 million Americans and cost our economy trillions. Government-funded initiatives—such as federally backed research into mRNA vaccines and “field team” deployments to local outbreaks—saved us from an even worse outcome.

Now those very systems are being torn apart. This year alone, over $1.8 billion in NIH research funding has been terminated. The CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, which sets safety standards for hospitals, was just eliminated. The new federal budget could cut funding for the Department of Health and Human Services by over a quarter.

And it’s not just pandemic preparedness systems suffering from mass layoffs and budget cuts. Institutions designed to protect Americans from foodborne illnesses, antibiotic-resistant infections, and bioterrorism are being gutted as well.

Simply put, this is a catastrophic mistake—one that doesn’t merely threaten our health and economy, but also our national security.

Defense officials have long warned that pandemics, bioterrorism, and emerging infections are critical threats to U.S. stability. The Defense Department reported to Congress earlier this year on how it continually works to monitor and prevent infectious disease outbreaks, given that “a pandemic could potentially impact every component of the Department’s ability to perform its mission.”

The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology also warned about the growing threat posed by biowarfare in a recent report. Because America’s biotech industry is falling behind China’s, in part due to the government’s dwindling support for research, we’re increasingly vulnerable to bioweapon attacks from adversaries, the report said.

The United States spends billions to prepare for military threats we hope never materialize. Our leaders need to fund disease prevention efforts with the same urgency we give to tanks and missiles. As we learned from COVID, infectious diseases can cause more death and destruction than even the most powerful conventional army.

COVID also showed us that pandemic preparedness pays dividends. Countries that invested more in limiting disease risks, such as Iceland and New Zealand, experienced lower mortality rates. By contrast, America suffered because we had allowed our public health infrastructure to erode for decades.

We cannot afford to repeat—or worse, deepen—that mistake. Policymakers can prevent that from happening by restoring funding for public health agencies and investing in resources, such as labs, vaccines, and rapid response teams, that serve as our first and last lines of defense.

Cutting public health funding may be politically expedient, but preventing infectious disease isn’t a partisan issue. Pathogens don’t check party affiliation, respect national borders, or stop at state lines.

We have a solemn duty—both to current citizens and to future generations of Americans—to strengthen the public health institutions that keep us safe. It’s time for our leaders to act like it.