for the communications pause, websites going down, portals closed, any data lost. as a fed working in HHS, none of this is what we want. I feel very helpless at the moment and every single fed I know working in public health isn’t enjoying this at all.

As feds, we serve the American people and took an oath of office when we first joined the government. We stand true to that oath despite the chaos unfolding in our workplaces.

I hope you give your program officers, grants management folks, and other federal partners some grace over the next few months. We are all worried about our families, careers, and safety to be frank.

If it offers any glimmer of hope, I still have faith in the systems, however flawed they are, that some justice will be served for all of this. Stay strong & remember why you joined public health in the first place!

The closest I get is navigating through the vaccines section and getting to a listing of current VIS's by year. Except clicking on any vaccine, even this season's updated COVID-19 vaccine, leads to the dreaded page not found. Yikes.

https://preview.redd.it/p37bvrl7xgge1.png?width=3068&format=png&auto=webp&s=b398242f19233490805d073f67133ece7641db14

Trump won, RFK is looming and the situation is changing every day. Please keep any and all election related questions, news updates, anxiety posting and general doom in this daily thread. While this subreddit is very American, this is an international forum and our shitty situation is not the only public health issue right now.

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Previous megathread here for anyone that would like to read the comments.

Write to your representatives! A template to do so can be found here and an easy way to find your representatives can be found here.

Just got some emails saying that we need to retract publications that have been submitted or accepted, but not yet published, if they don’t align with the EOs.

Not knowing how long CDC and others will be down (or what state the data will be in if/when it's back online), and assuming many of us scrambled to download available data before things went offline, where do we anticipate these data and other information being shared? Is there any effort to upload datasets that were, until today, publicly available to GitHub or another repository site?

If not, what can we do to expedite this and support our colleagues who rely on these data?

Apologies if this has been answered, but I haven’t been able to find anything about this.

Does anyone have insight into the legality of all this BS with government PH sites being shut down? I’m curious if this is something that actually is within the scope of executive power or if this is something that will likely be challenged? If it will be, is anyone aware of government officials speaking out about it? I also wonder if it really will be challenged or if everyone is just toeing the line.

Seems like funding is unknown for most, etc.

What are your thoughts on where funding is headed in terms of public health jobs?

We cannot access ELC CAMP, but the SAMS Secure Data EXchange and REDCap appear to still work.

Is anyone else having trouble accessing other CDC portals?

Title says it all. The rights to data are not exclusive to the universities and agencies that are hosting it, your work and ownership of it counts too.

Is anyone else having issues accessing their grants? I finally received an email that a message has been attached to my grant (no communication with our CDC PO since early Jan) and the site has been crashing on me the past hour. Anyone else?

I didn't realize DHS was federal US data but it is funded by USAID.

DHS is no longer taking new data requests, you can still download all data from old requests. If you have them, download all data ASAP.

For some background on me: I am an Epidemiologist at a local health department who works as part of the Communicable Disease team managing all reportable diseases in our county. Think ABCs of reportable diseases, that’s me! I’ve been a full-time Epi now for about 1.5 years!

Now the sad part: I was working up an Aseptic/Viral Meningitis case today of an eight year old kiddo. Case passed away yesterday from a (preliminary - not yet confirmed) disseminated fungal infection which was mostly likely suspected due to the fungus being detected in both CSF and blood cultures. Oof. deep breath These cases always stick with me, especially when they’re kids and I typically don’t take my work home with me but I will be thinking about this little boy all weekend and I just hope his family is doing okay.

This isn’t the first death I’ve experienced…we got a case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Case was a happy and healthy bus driver who went from completely normal to nothing in a month. A month!! I’ve lost a little kiddo to influenza and a 2 week old to another reportable disease last year. A recent case of Legionnaires passed away last week.

We try to do our best to manage reportable diseases and protect the public butttt mannnn when I get a death, it’s like a mental sucker punch! And with the world being so against public health post-COVID, it really is an uphill battle.

So, this is just a reminder to take care of yourselves and understand that you are doing the best that you can! Love and support to all public health professionals!

I wanted to tell y'all that I'm downloading the entire Household Pulse Survey from the Census since it asks about sexual orientation along with a few health and health related variables. If anyone knows of a group of people who are pooling data, please let me know, thank you!

Edit 1: and gender identity!

Edit 2: the site is now "down for maintenance" but I managed to get 2023 and 2024 in their entirety.

Edit 3: I managed to get 2022 using wayback machine, hoping to get the rest this way.

If so, can anyone post an article there?

Sorry if this has already been covered, but god guys this is so scary.

Hello, trying to get in to Public health, any leads on how to go about? Not sure if it's similar anywhere but I'm in Ontario

Using my throwaway to try not to get doxxed. I just got word through my local health department supervisors that at 5pm today all federal websites will be going dark. We have no idea what this means. They have already started rerouting or removing links to some topics but it is rumored likely that “all federal websites” are going to be pulled down by 5pm today 1/31/2025. I hope i am wrong, not trying to spread fear, just information given that we have ~2 hours to preserve vital information. Federal employees, i stand with you. Hold the line. Defend your oath to the Constitution. You are Patriots

Eta: yes, its 5 pm and there are still sites up. That dosent discount the fact that a lot of health data is disappearing and access to many sites we use to do public health work are restricted. My information was off, used language that implied all websites are going down, which may have caused panic that I apologize for. I felt it was my duty to share that information so that we could at least prepare for the worst

I recently found this survey (from 2003) that showcases the wide disparities between what parents think their teens believe about sex and what the teens actually believe. I'm looking for a similar study but something preferably within the last 5-10 years but can't seem to find one. Anyone got a lead on a source that might have one?

Just stumbled on this and it’s actually pretty wild. It breaks down how we’ve normalized overeating and the real impact it’s having on public health. Definitely makes you think: Quantitative Impacts of Normalizing Gluttony: Case Study of the USA

Back in the day, smoking was everywhere—on TV, in restaurants, even in hospitals. But once public health campaigns started framing it as not just unhealthy but socially unacceptable, smoking rates plummeted. Now, look at how we treat overeating - instead of addressing it as a serious health crisis, we’ve normalized it, even celebrated it, through movements like body positivity and fat acceptance.

But should we rethink this approach? If we successfully used moral and ethical arguments to curb smoking, could the same be done for overeating? Is it time to talk about gluttony—not as a personal failing, but as a public health issue?

Download as much as you can.

I’ve had a few people reach out and ask for code to reproduce the SVI since it was taken down yesterday.

I have been pointing folks to this excellent R package findSVI, which provides functionality to reproduce the data set over multiple years and for specific states.

You can check it out here: https://github.com/heli-xu/findSVI

Edit: looks like the census website is down too. We may have to rely on other back ups as this package queries the census api. As of right now the api seems to still be functioning but I will update this post as this changes.

Has anyone saved prior MMWRs?

My own experience with the MMWRs was they demonstrated clear evidence of the damage of COVID-19, and I am aware that it's not something that favorably reflects on the administration's pandemic response. With all the data purging, I am a bit concerned about retroactive editing, so I wondered if anyone has preserved prior MMWR releases.