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Groups that work to provide access to vaccines, especially for Black Georgians and others in underserved communities, are among those affected as the state Department of Public Health absorbs a $334.2 million loss from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The abrupt cancellation of funds announced March 25 sent DPH leaders scrambling to understand the impact and inform contractors, including many community organizations, to stop work immediately, according to emails Healthbeat obtained under open records laws.
“I personally called several of these recipients myself, as these funds were not slated to end until late 2026,” Georgia Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey wrote March 28 to Amy Doehrman and Russell Crutchfield, the deputy and chief operating officers, respectively, in the governor’s office.
Cuts to CDC Covid-era funding totaled nearly $12 billion nationwide. “These grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, [they] are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run,” stated a federal notice to grant awardees.
A group of Democratic-led states have filed a lawsuit challenging the cuts, prompting a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order blocking the reductions. But the order does not apply to Georgia, which is not among the states that sued.
DPH has shared few details about how the cuts will impact its work and did not respond to multiple requests for more information. Leaders at the Cobb and Douglas Public Health said in March that they would lose about $467,000. State officials have said the agency’s core services will continue.
Many of the affected community groups couldn’t be reached or declined to comment.
Here’s what we know.
Epidemiology lab capacity funding cut
State epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek notified Toomey and DPH agency leaders at 10:10 a.m. on March 25 that she had received a notice terminating CDC “epidemiology laboratory capacity” Covid funding. The funding was a Covid supplement to regular CDC lab funding to support state public health laboratory capacity.
Later that day, Drenzek wrote to senior leaders that only one grant had been impacted: “‘Only’ but HUGE.” The grant apparently had a previous end date of July 31, 2026. DPH did not respond to requests for additional information about how the state’s lab services would be impacted.
By that evening, the agency had started sending out termination notices to temporary employees “due to loss of funding.” The agency laid off 170 temporary contact tracers, according to DPH spokesperson Nancy Nydam.
Another 13 employees were laid off, including four who worked in epidemiology, four who worked on lab services, and three who worked on emergency preparedness, Nydam said.
Sean Penn’s CORE loses $3.3 million for vaccine work
The Community Organized Relief Effort, founded by actor Sean Penn, lost nearly $3.3 million of Vaccines for Children Covid funding, according to a preliminary spreadsheet Healthbeat obtained via an open records request.
Penn co-founded CORE in 2010 in response to an earthquake in Haiti. CORE now bills itself as a “global humanitarian organization.” It started working in Georgia during the Covid-19 pandemic and has since continued to help underserved communities get access to vaccines, according to its website.
CORE hosted 90 mobile vaccination events and administered 385 vaccines in March 2025 at a women’s shelter, a flea market in Pendergrass, Ga., a community shower and hygiene event in Clayton County, and others, according to a report submitted to DPH last month. Since March 2021, CORE has administered more than 149,000 Covid vaccines in Georgia.
“While DPH would like to provide sufficient notice, we must ask CORE to cease all activities effective tomorrow,” DPH Deputy Commissioner Chris Rustin wrote in a March 25 email to Sam Archbold, CORE’s Georgia area director.
The loss of CDC funds comes after CORE in February lost about $5 million of a $12 million contract with DPH to coordinate and manage Covid and flu vaccine events and outreach in high-risk and underserved communities, according to documents.
Atlanta nonprofit loses about $500,000 for vaccine equity work
Atlanta nonprofit BLKHLTH Inc. lost about half a million dollars in federal funding, co-founder Kadijah Ameen said.
The organization received notice of the cuts in late March, resulting in the cancellation of 10 upcoming events under a federal grant focused on Covid vaccine equity, Ameen said. BLKHLTH had planned to use information gleaned from listening sessions across the state to shape vaccine outreach efforts.
“We’re using data from the listening sessions to form our community-based vaccine clinics….We had to halt that programming,” Ameen said. “It was disruptive.”
Concerns over whether information about Covid and vaccines could be removed from the CDC website under orders from the Trump administration added urgency to BLKHLTH’s work, Ameen said.
“We don’t know how long Covid-19 info is going to be on the CDC website, and so we want to make sure that folks had a space to access information that was culturally responsive,” Ameen said. The group’s listening sessions had revealed that Black Georgians want reliable vaccine information that can help “cut through … disinformation.”
The hit to her organization’s budget was large, Ameen said. “We are a small non-profit and this was a million-dollar reimbursable grant, so that was a large percentage of our anticipated budget for the year.”
The organization has rearranged funding and plans to find alternative sources to continue its vaccine work, Ameen said.
Center for Black Women’s Wellness loses funds
The news prompted swift dismay from Jamea Dorsey, president and CEO of the Atlanta nonprofit Center for Black Women’s Wellness, which lost about $438,000 in the cuts, according to the preliminary spreadsheet.
“We are saddened and disappointed, especially due to the fact that we are receiving this communications after our Covid outreach event and listening session, which occurred on 3/25, and we have another event scheduled for tomorrow,” Dorsey wrote in a March 26 email to Jamillia Valentine, director of office of procurement and contracting services at DPH.
The organization was notified March 26 that its contract had ended at midnight two days before.
“Will we not be compensated for this work? These expenses were committed and allocated prior to 3/24,” Dorsey wrote. “Please advise, as this will cause hardship for our organization.”
“We are also deeply concerned about the loss of trust in the community,” Dorsey added.
Dorsey did not respond to a request for comment. The center provides health care services and maternal and postpartum support. It had about $3.3 million in revenue in 2023, according to its tax documents.
Red Covid testing kiosks removed
Red self-serve Covid testing kiosks DPH set up during the pandemic are being removed. They were provided under a contract with Longview International Technology Services, according to the spreadsheet of preliminary cuts.
The kiosks were programmed to deactivate on March 31, with Longview set to pick them up, according to an email from Rustin to district health directors.
“DPH has already paid for the test kits in the machines, so any expense between 3/24 and 3/31 will be absorbed by LTS.”
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
