Minnesota Department of Health cuts 170 workers in response to federal funding cuts

The impact of more than $220 million in federal cuts to the Minnesota Department of Health became clearer Tuesday, as the agency issued layoff notices to 170 workers and rescinded offers to another 20 new hires.

Minnesota as a result will encounter slower responses to foodborne and other infectious outbreaks, because the state had to cut lab technicians and public health workers who investigate how diseases spread, said Dr. Brooke Cunningham, state health commissioner.

“This is just a very sad day for public health,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

Funding to improve air quality and infection control in nursing homes is being reduced, according to a state news release about the cuts. Some community vaccination clinics are being canceled as well, along with programs to increase student interest in public health careers and to decrease inequities in health outcomes for American Indians.

The 170 workers who received layoff notices Tuesday were selected based on whether their jobs were partly funded by the affected federal grants. Some have seniority and union rights, though, so the health department notified another 130 junior workers that their positions are at risk.

The Trump administration last week announced $11 billion in cuts to federal public health grants involving COVID-19, arguing that the pandemic is long over and federal funds can be better spent on tax cuts and other priorities. However, many of the grants were COVID in name only, and funded broader public health missions, including efforts to confront a declining rate of measles vaccinations and a rising threat of avian influenza.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced earlier Tuesday that he is co-leading a lawsuit by 23 states and the District of Columbia to overturn the grant cuts.

“These terminations are as treacherous as they are illegal,” Ellison said in a written statement.

Olivia Dillon received her surprising layoff notice on Tuesday, even though her work is only partly funded by a federal COVID grant and largely focuses on investigating and responding to outbreaks of zoonotic diseases such as bird flu and rabies.

The 25-year-old from Minneapolis said the very workers who were traumatized by the pandemic, and the public backlash to their work, are now being traumatized again — either because they are losing their jobs or they are being asked to do more with less.

“People expect to get a call when they are feeling sick from a reportable illness. They expect a full investigation when there has been a human death by rabies,” she said. “But you can’t do all these things. You can’t call every single employee at a farm that is positive for avian influenza, where all these people have been exposed, potentially, without having the workforce to do it.”

Dillon joined the state health department two years ago after earning her master’s degree in public health from the University of Minnesota. She said she is heartbroken and not sure what she can do next because the federal cuts have decimated her entire profession and made job openings unlikely. She might go back to waitressing for the short-term.

“I genuinely don’t know what a lot of us (public health workers) are going to do,” she said.

Ellison and Democratic Party attorneys general from other states have successfully intervened against other attempted cuts to the public workforce by the Trump administration. An injunction last month at least temporarily blocked a reduction in the workforce at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and other U.S. health care facilities for veterans.

Thousands of federal health care workers also received layoff notices on Tuesday as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services trimmed its workforce. HHS cuts included public health investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and senior vaccine and drug safety officials at the Food and Drug Administration.

Cunningham said she is still assessing which public health programs in Minnesota’s Department of Health will be trimmed and which might need to be eliminated altogether. The department also is shelving investments to modernize its public health investigations, she said, such as artificial intelligence systems that can rapidly examine medical records and charts to identify emerging disease outbreaks.

Note: A prior version of this story incorrectly said the health department notified a larger number of junior workers that their positions are at risk. The figure is 130.