Healthcare educators fear the fallout of the Trump Administration’s cuts in the federal health budget and communication.

“For decades now, [the Center for Disease Control and Prevention] has been the source of a lot of information for guidelines [on] how to deal with certain infections or health issues,” said Lindsay Gielda, professor of Biology. “Taking down or stalling communication from reputable sources … is going to lead to more confusion.”

Cathy Gillotti, a former health communicator and chair of the Department of Communication & Creative Arts, agreed.

“This is unconscionable … it is a public health issue,” she said. “It’s imperative that people have the most recent information from credible sources.”

The Trump administration ordered government health to new public communications in January. A few days later, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the “temporary pause of all activities related to … disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

Since then, the National Institutes for Health announced it will cap indirect research costs to 15%. The department said this change will save $4 billion and “ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.”

Critics worry that such caps will compromise the research because some projects require significant expenditure on materials and facilities. A federal judge temporarily blocked the NIH’s funding cap.

“The federal government in putting us at risk,” said Gillotti. “Your job is to protect [public] wellbeing.”

Despite the judge’s temporary restraining order, NIH has suspended review of new research applications.

 “A number of my colleagues submitted grants to be reviewed, to get funding, and a lot of those were just sent back, saying, ‘We are not going to be reviewing grants at this time due to these changes’,” said Gielda. “A lot of the review process has been stalled.

“There might be a gap where people can’t get funds for who knows how long and so that will affect lab productivity,” she said. “We might have several years of students that can’t get into graduate programs, we’re going to have this deficit, this gap, moving forward because there’s just not going to be any trainees.”

As the situation evolves, educators continue to look at the big picture and how these Trump Administration changes affect the public.

“If information is power,” said Gillotti “then cutting information off is a power move.”