May 05, 2025 11:58 AM UTC

Double DOGEd: Helping More Black Kids Get Flu Shots

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• by: Colorado Pols

Amid the daily deluge of disheartening news about the effects of mass layoffs of federal workers and the slashing of funding for crucial public safety and health programs across the nation, here’s a particularly unsettling story from AP medical reporter Lauran Neergaard about the abrupt end of a Denver-area study hoping to chip away at persistently high rates of vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans, leaving the results of the effort forever unknown:

Some Denver parents got texts during this winter’s brutal flu season with videos sharing why people in their neighborhoods chose flu shots for their kids, an unusual study about trust and vaccines in a historically Black community.

But no one will know how it worked out: The Trump administration canceled the project before the data could be analyzed — and researchers aren’t the only ones upset.

“For someone like me, from the Black community who income-wise is on the lower end, we don’t often have a voice,” said Denver mom Chantyl Busby, one of the study’s community advisers. “Having this funding taken away from this project sends a horrible, horrible message. It’s almost like telling us all over again that our opinions don’t matter.”

Sadly, between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s scientifically unfounded views on vaccines and President Donald Trump’s vilifcation of anything intended to address a specific disparity that impacts a minority population under the acronymous epithet “DEI,” a study to persuade Black kids to get flu shots is something of an intersectional target for the DOGE chopping block.

Which is, objectively speaking, a very bad thing for Black kids and public health generally:

“We need to understand what it is that is creating this challenge to vaccines and why,” said Michael Osterholm, who directs the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and worries the country is entering “scientific dark ages.” [Pols emphasis]

Barring a legal remedy that isn’t outlined in today’s story, there is no upside to be hopeful for. This aborted study, like so many other casualties of the Trump 2.0 buzzsawing of the federal government, is now simply lost knowledge. All we can hope for is that if and when the time comes years down the road to undo the damage wrought by this administration in a matter of months, we remember to help more Black kids get their flu shots along with all the other priorities that will need to be re-reassessed.

And finally, if there is any justification for this decision that doesn’t boil down to racism and/or pseudoscience, it would relieve our conscience to hear it.