SALT LAKE CITY — Funding cuts at the federal level are taking a toll within Utah's public health workforce. Dozens of workers at the state and county level have been laid off as the Trump administration pulls back billions in COVID-related funding.
It comes amid a continuously challenging period in the field.
“We lost a lot of folks in the public health workforce - to attrition, to turnover, to people just being exhausted,” says Carrie Butler, who serves as the executive director of the Utah Public Health Association.
After working for years to combat COVID, Butler says concerns of a whole different kind crept into those workers’ minds Friday.
“Fear about the future - and what our future looks like in a world where we’re not interested in funding our public health infrastructure,” Butler said.
The federal government cut $98 million in funding set to come to Utah, leading to 17 people losing their jobs at the Salt Lake County Health Department. 37 more are to be laid off at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), with the final day for employees scheduled for April 11.
Butler tells me a significant portion of their funding comes from various federal agencies.
“70-90 percent of all our funds for public health come from federal grant money - so either the CDC or NIH,” said Butler.
DHHS officials say the cuts were forced after the "unexpected notification" that grants funding public health and behavioral health services were ended immediately on Monday, just days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced his agency would cut 10,000 full-time jobs.
The Utah DHHS says some of those jobs lost were supporting community health worker certification programs.
“They are truly some of Utah’s greatest heroes,” said Stephanie Burdick, who is on the board of the Utah Community Health Workers Association.
The certification program is a pathway Burdick helped create. She says these losses could be felt acutely in rural areas with healthcare deserts.
“They were helping to build those bridges between individuals and the communities that they serve,” Burdick said.
Their worry is this development leads to vaccine setbacks and the lack of funding ends in worse health outcomes. The six COVID-related grants employed 187 people and had approximately $98 million in remaining funds before the grants ended in late 2026.
“That trickles down in a really bad way to our health systems in the form of increased preventable illness,” said Butler.
DHHS says their largest group of employees laid off was working to plan for future public health emergencies. They also had to pause programs that would upgrade their information systems and further current research on "Long COVID," the chronic condition where symptoms remain present for 3 months or longer after a COVID-19 infection.
“We are sorry to see these positions end early,” said Utah Department of Health director Tracy Gruber. “We consider them all public health heroes, many of whom joined our department when we needed to ramp up operations to keep Utahns safe during the global pandemic. These staff came in to serve the public at an incredibly difficult time.”
The department said those affected by the layoffs may apply for other jobs with the agency.
