The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to end its funding for a Colorado center that helps local public health organizations get their programs off the ground and prove they work.
Colorado’s Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the director of the CDC this week asking that the agency reconsider cutting funding to the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center.
The CDC typically allots the center $1 million per year in five-year cycles, which accounts for about one-quarter of the center’s annual budget. The center, which is part of the Colorado School of Public Health, can also apply for federal grants to fund specific projects.
The letter pointed to programs to improve nutrition in schools and to teach early childhood educators skills to prevent burnout and mental health problems, and asked for more information about the decision not to fund the center.
“We believe that maintaining funding for the RMPRC is essential to ensuring all Coloradans and residents of the Rocky Mountain region achieve health equity by optimizing social-emotional, mental and physical health,” said the letter, which was signed by Reps. Yadira Caraveo, Jason Crow, Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen.
The CDC didn’t answer questions from The Denver Post about its funding decisions before publication. The agency faces more than $1 billion in budget cuts if a deal to end an impasse over the budget ceiling last summer becomes law. Negotiations about the federal budget for the fiscal year starting in October are ongoing.
One of the major Colorado projects that would be in jeopardy works to assess children up to 5 for “adverse childhood experiences,” an umbrella term that includes abuse and neglect, as well as witnessing violence against others or losing a caregiver, center director Jenn Leiferman said.
The program involves training staff at child care facilities in the San Luis Valley to identify children who need extra support, and develop a network to help their parents break the cycle of transmitting trauma to the next generation. The plan was then to develop a toolkit and share it with child care providers around the country, she said.
“It’s going to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible” to do the same work without CDC’s funding, she said.
Working with the center makes it possible for small programs to track data that proves they’re making a difference, which then makes it easier to get funding in the future, said Don Hanna, director of PALS Children’s Program in Alamosa. PALS offers after-school programming to children who have had traumatic experiences, with staff trained to meet their emotional needs while they learn and play.
The center also acts as a coordinator bringing together different groups working on addiction in the San Luis Valley, Hanna said.
“If they were to just disappear… I know that would be a pretty big resource lost,” he said.
Cathy Bradley, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, said she’s not sure why the CDC opted not to fund the center for another five-year cycle after providing money for about 20 years. The center scored well enough to count as “fundable” under the CDC’s guidelines, she said.
The existing funding will run out in September if the congressional delegation isn’t successful in pleading the center’s case, Leiferman said.
“We remain hopeful that CDC will want to partner with us,” she said.
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