February 5, 2025
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Trump Administration Climate Health Office
A climate office of the Department of Health and Human Services has been closed, and its staff was placed on administrative license
An old man faints in front of the Supreme Court in June 2024 as temperatures in Washington, DC, rose to the 90 Fahrenheit.
Andrew Leyden/Nurphoto through Getty Images
Climatewire | A climate office of the Department of Health and Human Services has been closed, and its staff was placed on administrative license, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.
The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, established in 2021 by President Joe Biden, has helped stimulate the health sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He did it in part by raising awareness among the non -profit organizations of medical care on fiscal renewable energy credits that could be claimed under the inflation reduction law, the extensive climate legislation of Biden.
Its closure, which has not been reported above, occurred when the extensive effort of President Donald Trump to freeze subsidy financing and reduce the federal workforce has sent shock waves throughout the government. One of the main objectives of the administration has been the programs that focus on expanding access to federal resources for minorities.
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The staff of the HHS climate office was commissioned administratively on January 22, the day after Trump signed an executive order that ended the programs dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion, according to the three people, to whom Anonymity was granted to avoid compensation. The office had about eight assigned people. The web pages dedicated to the climate office remained active for a few days after the executive order was signed, but almost all are offline.
Similar movements caused a protest from public health officials earlier this week, when the centers for disease control and prevention eliminated the materials of their website on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and providing care to affirm the genre . CDC also blocked access to their social vulnerability index, which uses census office data to classify the vulnerability of communities to natural disasters.
Other websites that disappeared include the Women’s Health Research Office in the National Health Institutes and the Minority Health Office in HHS.
HHS spokesmen did not respond to comments requests.
The changes are expected to occur when the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Secretary of Health in the next few days. Only five years ago, Kennedy published a book by blaming the Republicans in Congress for what he called a “climate in the crisis”, but has become more conservative on the subject since he launched an independent presidential offer failed in 2023. In August He told Tucker Carlson, the personality of the right -wing media, who had been “expelled” from the environmental movement because he does not believe in “this carbon orthodoxy that the only problem is carbon.”
Throughout the presidential campaign, Climate Health defenders expressed concern about what could happen with the climate office in HHS if Trump won the elections. But the official who directs the climate office, John Balbus, He tried to calm Those fears. In April, he said he was “optimistic” that office work “would speak for himself.”
“We are fighting to go to people who are the most sick and make them as equitable as we can. I don’t think it’s a partisan problem, “he said In an event Sponsored by permanent Kaiser.
Balbus, a career employee lent to the HHS of the National Health Institutes, where he studied the effects on climate change of climate change, is on administrative license.
During the Biden administration, the climate office helped launch interactive online tools to inform the public about how extreme heat could damage their health. Another tracks visits to the heat -related emergency room. Those tools were still online on Tuesday.
Among the pages that have disappeared is A voluntary promise for hospitalsHealth systems, suppliers and pharmaceutical companies to commit to reduce their carbon emissions to 50 percent by 2030 Net zero by 2050. As of November, some 140 organizations had signed the promise, according to a IT record maintained by the group Health Defense Care without damage.
“Since the commitment of the HHS health sector has been eliminated from the HHS website, medical care without damage has intervened to preserve it and the impulse it has generated in the health sector,” the group said in a statement in a statement .
Reprint of E&E news With permission from politician, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
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