May 2, 2025 – The most basic job of government is to protect the health and safety of its people. That starts with preventing the leading causes of death and disability. For Americans, this is heart disease, cancer, stroke, and other leading causes.
The latest proposal from this Administration would eliminate this work entirely. This isn’t a reorganization —it’s a wholesale gutting of programs that save lives and reduce health care costs for all of us. Eliminating these efforts would reverse decades of progress. You don’t improve things by destroying them, you improve them by improving them.
This proposal is also not a way to address federal bureaucracy. More than 70 cents of every dollar spent on these efforts goes to state and local health departments—to prevent heart attacks and strokes by improving prevention and management of high blood pressure, prevent breast and cervical cancer, and to support local disease detectives who track and respond to deadly trends.
Nor is this proposal about saving money. Just one of the many programs of CDC’s Office of Smoking and Health — Tips from Former Smokers — helped 16 million Americans quit smoking and saved more than $8 billion in health care costs in 2023 alone.
The Health Secretary has said he’s concerned about the rise in obesity and diabetes. That concern is well placed. That’s exactly why eliminating the highly effective National Diabetes Prevention Program, which has helped thousands cut their risk of developing diabetes in half, is such a deadly error. People who were a part of this community program reduced their risk of diabetes by 50% or more—comparable to taking expensive medication. Eliminating CDC’s divisions that track and address stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes, obesity, nutrition, and more will cost American lives and harm our economy and our healthcare system.
The same goes for healthy food. The Health Secretary has stressed the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables to reduce the risk of chronic disease. Cutting the entire nutrition division at CDC, including programs such as those that help small grocers stock affordable and healthy foods, counters his stated priority.
The bottom line: This proposal would make Americans sicker and poorer. It would cost lives and money.