Public health workers in Bloomington-Normal and across Illinois got a pep talk Thursday from someone who lost her job in public health.
Abby Tighe was fired from her "dream" job in overdose prevention at the Centers for Disease Control in February. That's when the Trump administration fired all probationary workers at the health agency.
Tighe, who lives in Atlanta, Ga., has muscular dystrophy, so that put her in a job classification with a longer probationary period and, thus, made per position vulnerable.
Some CDC workers were rehired. Tighe was not.
She has since helped to start the National Public Health Coalition, a group that advocates for public health.
Tighe was a keynote speaker at the Illinois Public Health Association's [IPHA] annual public health workforce conference in Uptown Normal.
“I’m angry that the American people are getting hurt by this, and a lot of people don’t know that. That anger has quickly turned into this motivation to make sure that voters, communities, policymakers [and] people know the important role that public health plays in our country,” Tighe said in an interview on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
Tighe said public health has a public relations problem.
“Part of what my group and what my colleagues are talking about now is how we [can] better communicate with the public and with policy makers about the importance of public health infrastructure both at the federal level but also at the state and local level as well,” Tighe said.
“People don’t know the true impact of public health on their day-to-day lives. We often say in the field that public health is working when you don’t know about it.”
Tighe said that, in short, public health services need to engage more with the public to show how they are helping or trying to help.
“The public health workforce needs to be talking to policymakers—your city council, your state legislature, your congressional folks [and] your senators about the important work you’re doing because policymakers are really who are making all of our decisions about public health at this point,” Tighe said.
The CDC under RFK
Tighe expressed frustration with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy [RFK] Jr., who gutted the organization and has been skeptical of some of the CDC's work, particularly regarding vaccines.
“We feel that RFK Jr. has driven a lot of the visceral hate towards CDC and public health in general,” Tighe said.
Tighe said her organization would like for him to resign, specifically after he failed to respond to a violent incident in August.
“The CDC was attacked by an armed gunman last month,” Tighe said. “My child was under lockdown; he goes to the childcare center that is near the CDC. An entire community has been traumatized, and the president hasn’t said anything about it. Secretary Kennedy hasn’t talked to staff about it and so we’re really, really unhappy with how things have gone.”
The shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta resulted in damage to the facility and the death of one police officer.
Tighe cited RFK Jr.’s stance against vaccines and siloing of treatments for chronic and infectious diseases as two other reasons why she doesn’t trust him in his role as Secretary.
“I think part of the problem here is that RFK Jr., his allies and people who agree with him operate on this ‘everything is common sense’ argument, which isn’t true, and it’s never been true; science is not inherently common sense,” Tighe said.
“If it were, we would still think that the world was flat and we wouldn’t know what gravity is. You look at anything in the [science, technology, engineering and math] STEM field, including public health, and what we learn from science is often a rejection of what the commonsense agreement is.”
“The credibility of the CDC, at least from a guidance perspective, is in jeopardy,” Tighe continued. “I don’t think that’s a reflection of the people who work in the CDC; I think they are doing their best to provide direct guidance to people where they can. Generally, RFK Jr. has been quite successful in dismantling the CDC and sewing deep distrust across the country.”
Building trust
Community health navigator at Bloomington’s Chestnut Health Systems, Karen Sours, also attended the conference.
“[I want] a better understanding about the future roles of community health workers; I really want to see our profession explode,” Sours said. “I want to see us out there helping the people who need the help."
Part of getting there, Sours said, is tied to proposed legislation supporting certifications for community health workers, and allowing them to bill insurance for services.
"I’m trying to learn what that means for me and what that means for Chestnut,” she said.
Sours said she often meets community members who do not trust public health providers, whose primary goal is to advocate within the larger health system.
“Please just open up," she said. "Know that there is somebody out here—maybe another community health worker [or] maybe a social worker—there is somebody that you can reach out to who can help you meet your needs socially, emotionally [and] behaviorally."
