Public Health Is in Crisis, Better Media Is Part of the Solution

Public health is in crisis.

This isn’t news to anyone who was paying attention in 2025. In the last year, the public health workforce in this country was gutted, international aid was eliminated, grants were slashed, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to be systematically dismantled by the world’s most famous anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.

Everything from research and development to Medicaid funding to children’s healthcare has been impacted. Thousands of public health professionals are out of work, organizations with funding are struggling to plan ahead because the landscape keeps shifting, and the public hasn’t even begun to feel the full impact of healthcare cuts.

Let’s be honest, public health wasn't perfect before 2025. Having worked in the field for 15 years, it’s often felt like a patchwork of temporary grant-funded initiatives that are band-aids on deeper societal problems. It was an imperfect system that only worked as well as it did because of the passion, hard work, and ingenuity of the thousands of people who have dedicated their lives to protecting our health. 

Why this publication, and why now? In part, it’s because I still deeply believe we need public health, and that politics, policy, media, and messaging - not science and medicine - are the core of the field’s biggest problems today. 

I’m creating Contagion because I believe the most dangerous contagion today is misinformation from bad actors. However, I’m also launching this publication because I sincerely believe we will have an opportunity to rebuild public health in a way that learns the lessons of our current era. Media that supports science and medicine must be a part of that solution.

If nothing else, this publication can be an outlet for me to write, learn, stay informed, and vent my frustrations about the people hurting us while maintaining my hope in a brighter future.

Contagion focuses on public health at the intersection of media and politics. I’m working on posts that cover current events, commentary, public health history, and book reviews.

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