As questions swirl around the future of a major federal lead poisoning prevention program, leaders of the local Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning are worried the organization may lose funding that has allowed it to expand its work.
In April, the Trump administration fired all the employees working in the Centers for Disease Control's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program, which has provided funding and expertise in 48 of 50 states. The move was part of ongoing efforts to downsize federal departments.
But as NPR reported, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy told lawmakers during a budget hearing last week that the program remains funded and the work will continue. But Kennedy and the agency he heads have been at best unclear about whether the fired staff will be reinstated.
"We're pretty concerned that there have been no plans to reinstate and rehire that staff," said Clare Henrie, program director for the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning.
Among the terminated staff members was a program officer overseeing a three-year funding award to the coalition. The organization was set to receive $200,000 a year for each of the three years, ending in 2026.
The coalition, which operates under Causewave Community Partners' umbrella, has used that money to pay for two full-time staffers, of which Henrie is one. It's also used it to expand its programs around training, education, and outreach.
"We're ready for the possibility that we're not ... getting that final year of funding," Henrie said, "and so the momentum that has been growing over the last year ... could be halted."
The coalition played an integral role in getting city of Rochester lawmakers to enact the 2005 lead ordinance that requires all rental houses to pass a lead inspection to receive a certificate of occupancy. In subsequent years, it has worked with community partners and local governments on efforts to prevent lead exposure.
The local law and the efforts around it have been used as a model nationally, including by the federal Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program. And across Monroe County, they've driven a substantial decrease in the number of children testing positive for lead exposure.
In 2004, when the county used a weaker threshold to identify children who had elevated blood-lead levels, 13,746 children were tested and 900 had elevated levels. In 2023, 12,788 children were screened, and of them, 241 were found to have elevated blood lead levels.
Henrie said she's also worried that any cuts to the federal Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program could have broader effects, since it provides money to the state for anti-lead poisoning initiatives, and that gets passed down to Monroe County.
"We don't know exactly what will happen," Henrie said. "But we felt at the coalition that it was important for the public to know that this was a possibility before it actually happened."
