Yale epidemiologist rallies experts to ‘Defend Public Health’ against proposed Trump cuts

CT Insider – Tuesday, March 25, 2025
By Liese Klein

After mobilizing experts to fight AIDS and COVID-19, a Yale public health professor is rallying the troops again ‒ to protect vaccines, Medicaid and other public health efforts from actions by President Trump.

“We’re putting the band back together,” Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves wrote on LinkedIn when launching Defend Public Health, a new advocacy group. Illustrating his post is an image of the Blues Brothers, a 1970s blues band that issued a similar rallying cry.

Gonsalves, who won a McArthur “genius grant” in 2018 for his research and activism around the AIDS crisis, now is part of the leadership team of a group that numbers more than 3,000 and is gearing up to take on Trump’s initiatives.

Defend Public Health’s role was spotlighted in reporting on the contested nomination of a vaccine skeptic Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Weldon’s name was withdrawn on March 13, with Gonsalves quoted in a Washington Post article about the failed bid on the topic of vaccine skepticism.

Range of activists aim to educate

Defend Public Health includes many researchers and physicians, but also retirees, artists and writers who want to highlight the impact of Trump’s proposed funding cuts, said member Dr. Caitlin Ryus, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale Medical School. Working through a system of committees, the group aims to inform citizens about the impact of potential cuts to public health efforts and safety-net medical care.

“We advocate for policies that protect access to care and health and address health inequities that affect particularly vulnerable populations,” Ryus said.

A board member of New Haven’s Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, Ryus said a particular concern is how Trump’s proposed Medicaid cuts could impact the homeless and others on the margin. Other Defend Public Health committees focus on vaccines and preparing for future pandemics, along with access to reproductive care.

“We’re trying to leverage all of the expertise and skill sets in a very diverse, very large group of advocates,” Ryus said.

Education is a key mission of the new group, Gonsalves said in a recent interview with the podcast “Help! Make it Make Sense.” Public health advocates in earlier eras were much more visible to the general public and outspoken in campaigning for vaccines and other breakthroughs, he said.

“We’ve got to get back the basics of public health,” Gonslaves said. Advocates also need to find benefactors to help their messages compete with well-funded opponents with anti-public-health messages, he added.

“The right wing has spent a lot of money to shift the narrative during COVID to basically make public health the enemy,” Gonsavles said. “I do think there’s a way to use our knowledge, translate it to the grassroots, and build a movement based on sharing science and public health information in a way that’s accessible to everybody.”

Yale extends bridge funding to researchers

Ryus and others are careful to add that members joined the group as private citizens and do not speak for institutions like Yale University. Faculty members’ support for Defend Public Health comes as Yale itself has taken a low profile on current events relative to its Connecticut neighbor Wesleyan.

Posting on online news site Slate last month, Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth wrote, “Business and civic officials, religious authorities and college presidents should weigh in when they see the missions of their institutions ‒ not to speak of the health of their country ‒ compromised.”

Trump’s actions relating to grants from the National Institutes of Health and other federal sources potentially put more than $150 million of funding at risk at Yale and other Connecticut universities. Medicaid cuts could cost billions more and impact more than a million Connecticut residents, according to state officials.

Amid the turmoil, Yale University has launched a process to extend additional “bridge” funding to faculty who have lost grants, a group of science deans announced on March 11. Although Trump’s actions are not directly cited, the university said it wanted to ensure that disruption to research is minimal.

“This is a temporary modification of the bridge funding process during uncertain times,” the deans said in a public statement.

Despite its relative silence on Trump’s actions relating to grant funding and other issues, Yale University was warned earlier this month that it was one of 60 schools nationwide being investigated for Title VI violations relating to alleged antisemitic harassment.

Ryus of Defend Public Health said that individual members of the group are aware of the potential risk in criticism of Trump’s actions.

“I can’t say that I don’t have my own anxieties about what is going on as a researcher in the space, especially someone who’s early in their career,” Ryus said. “But I’m trying to persevere with hope and hard work.”

Access this article at its original source.