ROCHESTER, N.Y. – New York State’s Public Health Fellowship Program will end abruptly at the end of May, cutting nearly 170 fellows, 4 of whom work in the Monroe County Health Department.
Two of the fellows in Monroe County were focused on emergency preparedness for climate events and illnesses associated with climate changes. One was managing the county’s transition to a new early intervention system and the other was working to embed trauma-informed practices into the department.
“They were supposed to be funded through July of 2026 but we were recently notified that their last day would be May 30th,” says Dr. Marielena Vélez de Brown, Monroe County Health Commissioner.
The Public Health Fellowship Corps currently employs 168 fellows statewide, 146 of whom have been embedded within local health departments or community sites.
Dr. Vélez de Brown says losing the 4 local fellows will be a loss for the department. “They were doing really important work that we had either not be able to start or were just working on very slowly because we did not have the staff bandwidth to work on these really important topics.”
The county doesn’t have the money to keep them on.
Dr. Vélez de Brown says this is only a small part of the $300 million in federal cuts impacting the New York State Department of Health that’s trickling down to counties and non-profits.
She’s also concerned with restructuring going on a federal agencies like HHS and the CDC and the programs that could be cut as part it, “we’re talking about childhood lead poisoning prevention programs, we’re talking about the National Asthma Control Program, environmental health tracking networks, these are key federal programs that try to avoid preventable deaths from environmental hazards,” she tells News10NBC.
County Executive Adam Bello tells News10NBC that he’s worried about what further federal cuts could be coming. “There’s no special stream of funding if hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicaid and childcare and all those dollars and SNAP benefits just disappear,” Bello says.
The County Executive says he’s having weekly meetings with department heads, state representatives and congressional leaders in order to have an understanding of what other federal cuts may be coming this way and when.
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