Lack of dedicated funding and staffing threaten the HHS health-equity goal
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services building, in Washington, D.C. as seen on August 26, 2016. | John Shinkle/POLITICOWhen a record-breaking heat wave hit Seattle last summer, it felt like the first few days of the pandemic all over again. Hospitals scrambled to secure ventilators for people whose lungs and hearts had stopped due to rising body temperatures. One emergency room physician texted another: “We are in crisis.
Without any money or a permanent staff to address the public health effects of global warming, low-income and elderly populations are likely to suffer devastating consequences from weather emergencies to chronic illnesses, leading to preventable deaths and costing the government billions of dollars. HHS established The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity in September and assigned employees from other parts of the department to sketch out the office’s priorities as it waited for funding that was supposed to come in this year’s
HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine testifies at her confirmation hearing. | Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images “Thankfully we were sort of between Covid surges, so our system had a little bit of capacity,” Mitchell said. “Because it could have been that much more overwhelming, when you stack one disaster on top of another disaster.”
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