CT public health officials fear federal cuts could affect vaccination clinics and education

Hartford Courant – Wednesday, April 30, 2025
By Sean Krofssik

Last month, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced massive federal cuts coming to the state with the bulk of it coming at the expense of the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

Among the hardest hit was $118,897,449 in estimated funding loss for the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Program, as well as $26,267,097 in grant funding for immunization activities. Other areas that could be affected include essential public health services such as disease outbreak surveillance, newborn screenings, childhood immunizations and testing for viruses and other pathogens.

Connecticut Department of Public Health commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said impacts have already been felt with the 43 contracts with local health departments that the Connecticut Department of Public Health had to issue stop-work orders.

Local health departments help enhance vaccination rates, access, equity and vaccine confidence. The lost funding could result in a loss of vaccination clinics, and the distribution of vaccine education materials would be stopped, according to Lamont.

“The immunization grant was to help keep up with immunization rates across communities and help with childhood vaccinations required for school admission,” Juthani said. “This grant helped find pockets of undervaccinated and meeting communities where they were by opening vaccination clinics or doing vaccine outreach to at-risk communities whether they be homebound or disabled. Those were what these grants were helping to fund.”

Juthani said the first tangible place where people would be able to notice the cuts would be vaccinations in at-risk communities.

“It may not be as easy in certain circumstances (to get vaccinations) but we do know you still have your child provider, you still have a pharmacy, and you still have doctors’ offices,” Juthani said. “It may require a little bit extra work, but there are still other ways in the state to be vaccinated. But what we were trying to do was to make it as convenient and easy as possible so there were less hurdles to overcome to get what they need to achieve their best health.”

Juthani said there have been some updates since the governor’s March 27 press conference, and the cuts remain in a “holding pattern” because of court proceedings. Juthani said there is a lawsuit regarding the cuts from 23 different states.

“Then we heard at (recently) that the judge has offered more time and needs more information for the federal government to come back to see if these grants are officially terminated or not on April 29,” Juthani said. “We communicated with the local health department to say they have another week of expenses that they could submit to us. You can’t plan large-scale projects or initiatives just one week at a time. … We are in a little bit of a holding pattern because things are so uncertain.”

Juthani said another change in recent weeks is that syndromic surveillance was initially feared to be one of the programs cut, but the commissioner said there has been a one-year reprieve to continue the program.

“Syndromic surveillance is where anyone that comes into the emergency department and complains about any sort of symptom, it would get put into a database,” Juthani said. “That information would come to the state of public health. That is how we find out if something expected is happening.

“During flu season, we would see the normal uptick that we see every season. Sometimes we can learn if something new is going on. We thought that system was going to be completely offline,” Juthani added. “That was an immediate program cut we weren’t prepared for.”

Juthani said the week-to-week funding with each judge ruling has forced some of the state’s health departments to let people go because the departments do not have the capacity to keep people if funding is not continued.

“It’s varied by each department by their budgetary needs,” Juthani said.

Juthani said the state has one of the top vaccination rates in the country due to a “cohesive, concerted effort across the board.” She included healthcare professionals and school nurses and others.

“We do have an advantage in our state which is you can have great efforts, but you need a population open and interested in hearing the message,” Juthani said. “There is always a desire to meet people where they are at and explain things the way they would understand. Funding can always enhance that.

“I hope we don’t slide back because of funding cuts because the open-mindedness of the population has not changed,” she added. “The access to healthcare has yet to change. I hope it doesn’t happen. But is there a risk? Of course. One of the other things the immunizations grant helped with was optimizing our CT WiZ platform which helps us track what those rates actually are.”

Juthani said school vaccination records are on CT WiZ and during the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccinations were logged. The cuts will stop enhancements to that program that provides a real-time public-facing dashboard on vaccination rates in the state.

“All you have to do on CT WiZ is put your name in and you can get your own vaccination records,” Juthani said. “We’ve been using this funding to expand our capacity to work on other platforms with CT WiZ so if you get a vaccination in one of our sister states on our platform you can see that on your record in Connecticut. It would include vaccinations from out of state if it was in one of our sister states.

“That’s the kind of upgrade we have been doing and that funding is in question whether we are going to be able to expand on that type of capacity,” she added.

Juthani said she is concerned about what she has seen in the cuts but is focused on everything the Department of Public Health can do to prepare for the cuts.

“Our goal here in Connecticut is to make sure we don’t lose ground on protecting public health despite cuts we receive. That’s what we are focused on,” Juthani said.

Dr. Ulysses Wu, the chief epidemiologist and system director for infectious diseases at Hartford HealthCare, said he has concerns about cuts to immunization education.

“The impact is not just the immunizations themselves, but it’s the education that is associated with it,” Wu said.

“As you know, immunization is very divisive,” Wu said. “The science is solid. I think people should be concerned at many different levels. On a broad level, public health is not being prioritized. Cuts are going to be made for that. On a micro level, the access and education and cost that may be associated with this. Yes, people should be concerned on a micro and macro level.”

Wu said given the current measles outbreak in the country, immunizations are even more important. According to the CDC, as of April 24, there were 884 cases in the country. There were no cases in Connecticut, but surrounding states had some reported including Vermont, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.

According to the CDC, the 884 cases are a large jump from the 285 in all of 2024, and 96% of the cases are individuals who are unvaccinated or are of unknown vaccination.

“Measles is a highly contagious, highly dangerous disease that is also entirely preventable with the MMR vaccine,” Juthani said. “Before 1963, there were over 500,000 cases of measles in the U.S. every year. In 2000, that number plummeted to just 85, proving the MMR vaccine works.

“Now is the time to act to prevent an outbreak here and to ensure you are vaccinated while there are no cases in Connecticut,” she added. “Staying up to date on vaccinations not only protects you and your family but also helps protect people who cannot be vaccinated due to medical conditions or are too young to get vaccinated, like infants below 6 months of age.”

The Connecticut Department of Public Health is urging residents to “ensure they are adequately protected if they are traveling to areas with active outbreaks.” It is also recommended that the MMR vaccine be given to infants 6-11 months of age who are traveling internationally or in areas of the country with active measles transmission.

“Most of the measles transmissions in the United States prior to this year were due to international travel,” Wu said. “Now we have to worry about domestic travel with every exposure that is possible and brought back to Connecticut. Remember they can be contagious before the rash or after the rash has subsided. There can be people that are infectious that don’t even know it.

“What happens is, when more people are immunized, it creates that safety net and that herd immunity,” he added. “When you start losing that herd immunity, let’s just say it’s the state of Connecticut. Your chances of getting measles are going to be increased. For those who are immunized for the most part should be protected. What can take hold of is those who are not immunized. The immunization rate in Connecticut is very good but it is also not 100%. This is all going to be impacted for Connecticut mostly indirectly. But there may be some direct effects as well.”

Wu said the worst-case scenario of more cuts would be “any transmissible disease that results in an epidemic or a pandemic that was preventable.”

“That is what this is all about,” Wu said. “It’s about preventable disease. All of these measles cases were preventable. We understand the greater picture of people’s rights in terms of what they can and can’t do. The only problem is that it changes a little bit in the sense that what you do may impact someone else.

“With these transmissible diseases, it’s not only about the individual but it’s also about the community at large,” he said. “We run into these issues where it’s not just an individual decision at this point and sometimes you have to look at the greater good.”

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