At issue are tax credits that lowered the cost of ACA plans that are set to expire Dec. 31. The credits were enacted as part of a Covid relief package in 2021. Unless Congress takes action to extend the credits, premiums for Georgians will, on average, more than double, a recent Georgia Health Initiative analysis found.

The enrollment deadline is Monday, Dec. 15, for coverage to begin Jan. 1.

The GHI analysis predicts that the higher costs would prompt about 340,000 of the 1.5 million Georgians who are enrolled in the ACA to go without insurance next year. The analysis is based on data showing how many people enrolled after the premium tax credits took effect.

Congress is set to recess for the holidays next week. On Thursday, a Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies and a Republican proposal to provide enrollees with additional funds for health care costs instead both failed on 51-48 votes in the U.S. Senate.

The exact amount of the rate increases will vary based on several factors, but on average, premiums in Georgia will more than double, from an average of $69 per month this year to $148 per month in 2026, according to the GHI report.

Many will likely “buy down” to lower-coverage plans that may have lower premiums, but higher out-of-pocket costs, the analysis said.

How will higher costs impact health care in Georgia?

People who make more than 400% of the poverty level (about $62,600 for a single person, or $128,600 for a family of four) will see the biggest increases if Congress doesn’t act, said Louise Norris, health policy analyst for Healthinsurance.org.

“All of a sudden they’re faced with full-price premiums, which are really high, depending on how old you are, and where you live,” Norris said. People making less than 400% of the federal poverty level will also see increases, she said.

Many people will opt to go without insurance, which will increase health care costs across the board, Norris said.

Employer-sponsored plans and Medicare plans have also set higher premiums for next year.

“When you increase the uninsured rate, you do drive up costs for everyone who still has insurance,” Norris said.

Anna Adams, senior vice president of government relations at the Georgia Hospital Association, said, “Hospitals will continue to provide high-quality care to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay, but the loss of coverage for many of those patients will have a substantial impact on hospitals’ ability to stretch already scarce resources.”

Many patients without insurance will turn to emergency room care, Norris said, for which they won’t be able to pay. That will cause hospitals to raise rates, which will drive up premiums for everyone.

Who is eligible for Affordable Care Act insurance and where to find plans in Ga.

U.S. citizens, nationals, or lawfully present immigrants who are not incarcerated can enroll in the plans. About 1.5 million Georgians, or around 13% of the population, currently use the plans.

Most of those enrolled do not have access to insurance through their employers.

To compare plans and enroll, visit GeorgiaAccess.gov. In the past, Georgians purchased their insurance through a federal website called the Marketplace. The state established its own portal last year.

What happens if Congress doesn’t extend the tax credits by the Monday deadline?

The rates listed on GeorgiaAccess are the rates that will take effect if Congress does not act, Norris said. She advises selecting a plan by Monday’s deadline.

“You can base your decision on those numbers. Pick a plan, but then don’t just tune out completely. Make sure you still keep an ear to whether or not anything is changing,” she said.

Congress could still renew the subsidies or agree to another plan to lower costs even after the deadline, retroactively.

What happens if you miss the Monday deadline to enroll?

Those who have health insurance through Georgia Access will be re-enrolled in the same plan or the most similar plan available for next year.

Aetna will not be offering ACA insurance in 2026, so those customers will be shifted to another company, said Bryce Rawson, a spokesperson for the Georgia Office of Insurance and Safety Fire.

Those who don’t already have health insurance and miss the Monday deadline can enroll until Jan. 15. But coverage wouldn’t start until Feb. 1.

What options are available for those who cannot afford health insurance?

Here are some resources available in Georgia for uninsured people.

• Many charity and low-cost clinics across the state operate on a sliding scale for low-income and uninsured people. Here are some directories to help find one near you.
• For DeKalb and Fulton residents, Grady Health offers financial assistance, often called a “Grady card,” for inpatient and outpatient care. For residents of other counties, Grady provides financial assistance for emergency services.
• Contact your health system or doctor and explain the situation. Hospitals are often able to write off debt, provide lower bills, or set up a payment plan. Just ask.
• Make sure you are being charged the lower “self-pay” rate rather than the insurance rate.
• Local public health departments offer an array of low-cost services, including vaccinations, many routine screenings like mammograms, and sexually transmitted infection prevention and treatment services.
• Eligibility for Medicaid varies. Typically, people who are eligible for the ACA are not eligible for Medicaid. Those who are eligible include:
• Children from low-income families
• Adults 19-64 with incomes up to 100% of the federal poverty level ($15,650) who work, volunteer, study, caregive or complete another qualifying activity for 80 hours per month.
• People with certain medical conditions or who are aged, blind, or disabled.
• Pregnant and post-partum women with low incomes.
• Parents of children under age 19 who earn very low incomes

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Low-income women in Georgia and across the country can get screenings for breast and cervical cancer for free – but not all of them do.

A new project at Morehouse School of Medicine aims to learn what barriers Black and Latina women in Georgia face in accessing those services. Researchers are launching a two-year, $800,000 project to find out, funded by the Black Women’s Health Imperative, a national nonprofit and advocacy group.

The study aims to understand why people may not be taking advantage of what Morehouse School of Medicine associate professor Desiree Rivers calls “an incredible resource”: the Georgia Breast and Cervical Cancer program, which provides free screenings for low-income, under- or uninsured women.

The Georgia initiative is part of a national program overseen and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1991.

While President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal 2026 would have eliminated the screening program, the latest version of the Senate budget includes funding to continue it, and the House budget would increase funding, said Molly Guthrie, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Susan G. Komen breast cancer nonprofit.

Close to half a million, or 14%, of Georgia women between ages 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2023, according to the U.S. Census. About 12.7% of Black women in that age group are uninsured, and the rate is especially high for Latina women: 34.2%.

The Georgia screeningprogram screened only 11,919 women for breast and cervical cancer in fiscal 2024, according to data from the Georgia Department of Public Health. The screenings and other related services are available at local public health departments, the Grady Health System, and some other locations.

Many women know they should get regular mammograms and cervical cancer screenings, said Dr. Christopher Ervin, director for community-based initiatives at the Department of Family Medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for them to do so, even if the tests are free. That’s the impetus for the new study.

“What we think will be important is if we had some way of understanding why aren’t people taking advantage of those services,” said Rivers, the study’s principal investigator.

Some of the reasons could be a lack of knowledge, a lack of transportation, caregiving responsibilities, and difficulty taking time off work, especially for hourly employees, Rivers and Ervin said.

There could be psychological reasons, as well, said Jenny Spencer, an assistant professor of population health at the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School who is not involved in the study. People may be scared of a positive result or feel like they won’t have the resources to get needed care if diagnosed with cancer.

“When you look at ‘what I should be doing to be healthy’ versus ‘what I can do to be healthy’ in many of these communities,’ that’s a big gap to cross,” Ervin said. “The point of this study is, how do we help our community members better utilize the screenings that are available to them?”

That’s particularly important for Black and Latina women, said Amirah Burton, a postdoctoral fellow at Morehouse School of Medicine.

When compared to white women, fewer Black women are diagnosed, Burton said.

Black women who are diagnosed “tend to have worse survival rates. They die sooner. They have worse outcomes in terms of their health when compared to white women,” Burton said, meaning that increasing early screening for breast and cervical cancer can make a difference.

Mortality is higher in non-Hispanic Black women than in non-Hispanic white women for breast and cervical cancer, Spencer said. Black women also have higher incidence of cervical cancer.

“Historical racism in the United States has led to differences in clinical care by race that persist,” Spencer said. “We know that women with otherwise similar characteristics do have different outcomes.”

The researchers in Atlanta want to recruit 120 participants for their study. They will use surveys and interviews to better understand what barriers the women face in getting the screenings. They will also use community health workers to help women better access services and track how well that works. They will incorporate those workers’ and medical providers’ perspectives into their research, as well. The screenings will be conducted at Grady.

Conducting the research in DeKalb and Fulton, counties with large Black populations, and under the auspices of a historically black college and university is important, Burton said.

“We’re not just doing it just because we’re doing it [but] because we care about you all in the population that we are serving,” Burton said. “We can help those in the community, help them to not only understand the importance, but to help them also understand the work we’re doing.”

People interested in participating in the study or learning more can email Professor Desiree Rivers at drivers@msm.edu.

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In the midst of a national legal battle over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Georgia has started the process of implementing expanded work requirements for people getting the food aid.

The new requirements were enacted as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed by President Donald Trump in July, and the Georgia Department of Human Services announced it would implement them beginning Nov. 1.

The new requirements will result in about 96,000 Georgia SNAP recipients out of a total of 1.4 million eventually losing their benefits, according to an estimate from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

For those already enrolled in the program, the requirements kick in when they recertify their eligibility, typically every four months for able-bodied adults in Georgia. New participants will have three months to meet the work requirements, said Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director for the Food Research and Action Center.

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, was created in the 1960s to provide food aid to low-income people, typically those who are living at or around the federal poverty level, which amounts to a $3,483 monthly gross income for a family of four, or $1,696 for a single person.

About 1 in 8 Georgians are enrolled in the program, which allows them to purchase food at 9,800 retailers across the state, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

While the program has for many years required participants to work, the regulations that took effect Nov. 1 add requirements for three groups that have since 2023 been exempt: the homeless, veterans, and youth aging out of foster care.

Whereas previously the requirements applied to those up to age 54, the new requirements in Georgia will apply to those up to age 60, according to the Georgia Department of Human Services. And while previously caretakers of children under age 18 were exempt, now the exemption only applies to those who take care of children 14 and under.

People will have to work or participate in an employment and training program for an average of 20 hours each week to maintain eligibility. If people fail to meet the work requirements for three months in a 36-month-period, they lose benefits.

Certain groups are still exempt, including those who are pregnant or mentally and physically unfit for work, as determined by the caseworker and, in some cases, medical professionals, or the receipt of disability benefits.

“It’s going to increase hunger,” Plata-Nino said. “There are people who are not going to get benefits in the future, even though they’re still hungry, even though they still have no other income, just because there are insufficient jobs, and they’re doing the best they can working 19.5 hours” instead of 20 a week.

“You’ll start seeing it really around the winter time, around February, March, when whole buckets of populations as a whole will start losing benefits,” as people undergo the recertification process for the first time under the new requirements, she said.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also ended SNAP benefits for refugees, asylum seekers, trafficking and domestic violence victims, and some other groups who are living in the United States lawfully. The rules will be applied to new applicants at the time of their application and to people already receiving SNAP when they seek recertification.

A post from Trump on Truth Social earlier this week said that under President Joe Biden, the benefits were “haphazardly ‘handed’ to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!”

SNAP benefits in legal limbo due to government shutdown

The systemic changes come as the program is in crisis due to the federal government shutdown. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month announced that the program would run out of funds beginning in November.

That prompted two legal challenges, one filed by a group of Democratic-led states and one filed by a coalition of municipalities, nonprofit groups, businesses, and unions.

The Trump administration said it would make partial payments for November, which involves complicated calculations that would delay payments. In response, Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, on Thursday ordered the USDA to make the full November SNAP payments to states.

“SNAP recipients — 16 million of whom are children — will go hungry if they do not receive their SNAP benefits this month,” McConnell wrote.

The Trump administration on Friday appealed, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to immediately stay McConnell’s order.

Georgia DHS spokesperson Ellen Brown said Friday the agency is issuing partial SNAP benefits for November.

“We are working with our vendor to determine updated benefit amounts based on the new USDA guidance and to establish a timeline for when the partial benefits will be available to Georgia SNAP recipients,” Brown said. She said the agency is “working as fast as possible” to get the payments out and that recipients should check the DHS website for updates.

The lack of funds could force Georgians to make “difficult choices,” said Ife Finch Floyd, director of economic justice at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

“Should I pay an important bill, or pay my rent, or buy food? Should I refill my prescription, or should I buy food? Should I eat, or give my dinner to my children?” Floyd said.

WIC funding expected to last into December

Meanwhile, the release of an additional $450 million in emergency funds last week has given a separate nutrition program – the Women, Infants and Children program – a few more weeks of breathing room.

WIC, administered by the Georgia Department of Public Health, focuses on low-income pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and children under 5.

“At this time, DPH is projecting Georgia WIC will have sufficient funding to provide WIC benefits through approximately the first week of December,” spokesperson Nancy Nydam Shirek said. The funds will allow the agency to continue to operate WIC clinics at local public health departments through the end of the year.

Georgia has 248,506 people enrolled in WIC.

The program, unlike SNAP, is limited to certain foods, including baby formula. WIC also provides additional services like breastfeeding support.

“WIC is serving individuals at such a critical time of growth and development. Forty percent of all infants born in this country are participating in WIC,” said Kate Scully, deputy director of WIC at the Food Research and Advocacy Center. “It’s providing them the formula they need if they’re not being breastfed. And these are things that babies can’t go without. You can’t just substitute something else.”

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Maha Mousnad doesn’t let much keep her down. Not a long journey to the United States or the arduous process of becoming a registered nurse here. Not the fact that her family is living in the midst of a civil war in Sudan, nor the start of a global pandemic a month after she landed on U.S. soil.

Rather, Mousnad’s sunny disposition and faith in a better future have driven her from the streets of Khartoum to Clarkston, Georgia. And it’s been a banner year for the 38-year-old. In 2025, she managed to become a U.S. citizen and pass a licensing exam so she can practice as a registered nurse at her beloved Mosaic Health Center.

Mousnad had a successful career back in Khartoum, even teaching nursing. Married with three children, she lived near her parents and brothers. But she wanted something more.

“For me and the people I know, America is one of the big dreams,” Mousnad said. “When we come in USA, we’re looking for home.”

Last year, nearly 60,000 foreign-trained nurses took the National Council Licensure Examination to qualify as registered nurses in the United States. There’s a shortage of RNs across the country, with Georgia needing to train 772 more RNs annually to keep up with projected demand, according to the Georgia Center for Nursing Excellence. Mousnad’s journey from Khartoum to Clarkston shows how foreign-trained nurses can help plug that gap.

Her infectious smiles, can-do attitude, and personal experiences navigating the path to the “American dream” have sparked a loyal following among patients at Mosaic, where she speaks to Arab immigrants in their native language, breaks down scary medical information into simple terms, and provides those most essential elements of good medical care: time and understanding.

Praying for a visa, then knocking on doors

Back in Khartoum, her daily 4 p.m. bus ride was her time to pray: “Yah Allah lottery” – let her family land a visa to the United States. The diversity immigrant visa program awards about 50,000 visas each year to randomly selected applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Mousnad was so committed that even her friends were praying for her, she said.

Finally, her family won a visa through the lottery. Soon after they arrived in eastern Maryland in 2020, the country shut down for the Covid pandemic.

That didn’t stop Mousnad: She knocked on the door of a local hospital, where only a window opened due to the pandemic. Mousnad said she’d been a nurse in Sudan and was offered a new job as a medical assistant. She devoted herself to learning English and soon became a certified nursing assistant.

While working in the hospital, other international nurses told her there were steps she could take to become an RN in the United States. Many elements of her degree transferred, but she needed to take the NCLEX to get her license.

In the meantime, her husband got a job in Atlanta, where Mousnad visited the public library in Clarkston daily, looking for jobs. An internet search revealed that Mosaic Health Clinic – then called the Clarkston Clinic – was just two minutes away.

Again, Mousnad knocked on a door. Shortly thereafter, she was hired at Mosaic.

“You have to move, find the way, and if this door [does] not open for you, of course, the other door can open for you,” Mousnad said.

Mousnad’s relationship with the clinic grew strong. She tried to pass the NCLEX once but failed, like more than half of this year’s first-time test takers who were educated abroad. So Mosaic’s executive director Jeremy Cole lined up nursing professors to help her prepare to take the exam again. It was a no-brainer, he said, because Mousnad and other team members embody “what is best about our nation in all of its diversity.”

Beth Ann Swan, a professor at Emory University School of Nursing, stepped in. She wanted to help Mousnad for professional and personal reasons. The Mosaic Clinic has a close relationship with Emory, and Mousnad helps guide Emory students as they learn to be nurses.

Personally, Swan had been mentored by two foreign-born nurses early in her career (Mrs. Cho and Mrs. Cherian), so when asked to help Mousnad, “the only response was yes, absolutely!” With the help of Swan and another instructor, Sharon Mingo, Mousnad passed the NCLEX in April, three months after she became a U.S. citizen.

Mousnad, in turn, has found many ways to pay it forward. She founded three What’s App groups – along with fellow nurses – to help foreign nurses who face the same challenges she did. One sends practice questions out to help Arabic speakers prepare. Others help demystify the process of becoming a nurse and finding a job.

Mousnad bridges a gap for Arabic-speaking patients

Meanwhile, at the Mosaic Health Center, which provides health care to uninsured people in Clarkston, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the United States, Mousnad has built a following among her patients, whom she calls “my people.”

The clinic is on track to provide 500 to 600 more visits this year than last, Cole said. Mousnad said many Sudanese people have started coming, learning about it through word of mouth, and she has many Arabic-speaking patients from Syria and Iraq as well.

Mousnad helps them bridge cultural differences in health care. She said many patients lack information, especially about chronic conditions like hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. That and a desire to turn to traditional remedies is a commonalty between her patients at Mosaic and her patients back in Sudan, she said.

When Mousnad encounters patients at Mosaic who are skeptical of allopathic medicine, she spends a lot of time counseling them in simple language. She said it’s important that she can speak to them in Arabic.

“When you see someone like you, it’s really more comfort for them,” Mousnad said. “They believe on me.” Patients come and ask for her by name. “‘Where is Maha?’” one asked, she said, insisting only Mousnad would do: “‘I will wait.’”

Mosaic’s staff members often make follow-up calls to patients to check on them and ensure they are taking their medications, Mousnad said, reflecting what Cole said is a belief at Mosaic that health care is “transformational not transactional.”

Mousnad said what many of her patients need right now is mental health support because they are facing anxieties over their immigration status, as well as economic strains.

“Our patients now, they need more psychological support and anxiety, stress relief and depression, because normally per day, we have one or two patients, they stay here four or five hours just for crying,” Mousnad said.

As an immigrant herself, she understands just how much stock many have put in the American dream.

“They live in the country a long time, they come here with big dreams,” Mousnad said. “It’s really hard and painful for them” to fear losing that, whether for reasons related to immigration status or job loss.

Cole agreed, saying “there is a significant amount of fear and uncertainty in this community.”

Mousnad said in that context, Mosaic’s commitment to caring for its patients as whole people is what keeps them coming back.

“We are not like any other facility. We give the patient time,” Mousnad said. “They want someone [to] listen to them, hear them, advise them, love them like we are.”

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Sudden cuts to U.S. global health aid this year have hit Atlanta-based international nonprofits hard, spurring layoffs of close to 1,000 workers, and imperiling their mission to help millions of people access food and life-saving health services.

A program that trained thousands of health and nutrition workers in Bangladesh is “going down the drain,” said Joyce Sepenoo, senior director of global health programs at CARE. Programs that are helping countries like Uganda nearly eliminate river blindness have lost funding, said Dr. Kashef Ijaz of The Carter Center.

They are among leaders of four Atlanta global health organizations affected by cuts implemented by the Trump administration since taking office in January.

The suddenness of cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development caused far more disruption than was necessary, said Dr. Patrick O’Carroll, president and CEO of The Task Force for Global Health.

“Many countries said, ‘If you told us this was going to happen, and you gave us five years to do that, we could have done a pretty good job, and it’s really in our interest to do so’,” O’Carroll said. “But this happened so suddenly.”

In March, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the government was canceling 83% of the programs at USAID. “The 5,200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” Rubio said in a March post on X.

Atlanta’s global health leaders disagree.

Tropical diseases like trachoma, a bacterial eye infection, or even malaria could come back here if they are not well-controlled overseas, Ijaz said.

Reducing diseases globally is good for America’s security, too, Ijaz said, because it helps improve economies and political stability in other countries.

Here’s a rundown of where things stand at five large global health organizations based in Atlanta.

CARE: Aid to 18.4M people terminated

Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere was founded in 1945 in the wake of World War II to put together food and life-saving items for people in war-torn Europe: care packages. Since then, it has dramatically expanded its scope to a range of humanitarian projects around the world and moved its headquarters to Atlanta in 1993.

CARE lost $165 million in direct federal funding – mostly from USAID, since the start of the year, said spokesperson Michael de Vulpillieres. The organization received a total of just over $903 million in revenue for the year ending June 30, 2024, according to its financial statements.

The loss of funds resulted in layoffs: 850 full-time workers cut from a total workforce of about 7,400. Most of those positions were in other countries, but 110 U.S.-based workers also lost their jobs. Contract positions have also been cut, de Vulpillieres said.

All told, 46 programs in 30 countries that reached an estimated 18.4 million people have been terminated, he said.

Those include:

• health programs and food distribution programs in Sudan, where “a protracted famine is taking hold,” according to the World Food Programme
• health and nutrition services to mothers and children in Bangladesh
• health programs in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo
• Programs to provide services to survivors of violence in Honduras and Guatemala

“Our program in Bangladesh trained and invested in over 50,000 workers, and it’s all going down the drain,” Sepenoo said during an Oct. 4 panel discussion at the Decatur Book Festival. “The world is coming to a place where we all need to shout on top of our voices and say we are so connected that the impact of these things in one country affect all of us.”

Carter Center helps fill gaps in U.S. aid

The Carter Center receives only about 9% of its funding from the federal government, so it hasn’t been hit as hard as others, Ijaz said. There have been no layoffs in its health programs.

Still, Ijaz is worried about how countries like Uganda, which is very close to eliminating river blindness, and Ethiopia, which has the highest burden of trachoma in the world, will continue to make progress because other nonprofits working there have lost significant funding.

“If you miss one mass drug administration for prevention of trachoma in a population at risk, you basically put the program back two years,” Ijaz said. As in many countries, the effort in Ethiopia relies on drugs donated from pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Those could expire if they are not administered on schedule.

“All those gains which were made, they can be reversed,” Ijaz said. The Carter Center is trying to help “meet the moment” by drawing on its own resources to fill the gap left by U.S. aid cuts, including providing $5 million to partner organizations for trachoma elimination in Mozambique, which is close to eliminating the disease, and continuing its own work in Ethiopia.

“We want to reach the finish line and finish the job, and this is our contribution, in this larger ecosystem of partnerships, collaboration and relationship, to fill in those gaps,” Ijaz said.

The Task Force for Global Health finds workarounds for some programs

The Task Force for Global Health is the “world’s longest-running pharmaco-philanthropy,” O’Carroll said during the book festival panel. Much of the organization’s work focuses on managing drug donations from pharmaceutical companies for diseases like river blindness and trachoma to countries around the world.

The Task Force, founded in 1984 and headquartered in Decatur, has had to lay off staff, spokesperson Jessica Wurst said, though she declined to say how many people. It also lost funding for a USAID-funded neglected tropical disease program in early 2025 aimed to improve how sub-Saharan governments and organizations prevent and treat diseases like river blindness.

The $45 million award involved a partnership with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana and an African research network, according to a 2024 news release.

The Task Force’s partners have found workarounds in the short-term, Wurst said. Pfizer donates the medication for trachoma, and nongovernmental organization partners stepped in to ensure that drugs were distributed before they expired.

Still, Wurst said, that’s only a short-term solution, and the organization is concerned about next year because about 40% of the areas that need the trachoma drugs were funded by the U.S. government.

Other funding streams have remained intact, Wurst said. Those include efforts to support national programs to dramatically reduce intestinal worm infections in several countries, including Bangladesh and Malawi, work on polio eradication in the remaining countries where outbreaks persist, and providing support for viral hepatitis elimination.

Merck and GSK donate drugs for lymphatic filariasis and river blindness, and so far none of those drugs have expired, Wurst said. Countries that lost USAID funding are “pursuing alternative solutions to sustain progress toward elimination.”

In the United States, The Task Force is watching what Congress will do to the U.S. foreign aid budget. “Some cuts that have been proposed would diminish our country’s ability to prevent future pandemics, manage outbreaks, and maintain the infrastructure of health systems across the globe,” Wurst said. “These losses weaken global capacity to fight diseases that continue to threaten lives worldwide and jeopardize American safety.”

Atlanta’s public health ‘anchor’: the CDC

O’Carroll likened the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the “anchor store” in a mall because it is the cornerstone of Atlanta’s global health work.

The agency has been rocked by multiple rounds of layoffs this year, most recently on Oct. 10. The CDC formerly had offices in more than 60 countries, according to its website.

Funding for malaria prevention was canceled, and 27 workers in sub-Saharan Africa were recalled to the United States earlier this year, Politico reported. Staffers who focused on global HIV and TB in the Global Health Center were terminated in April.

After the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization in January under an executive order from President Donald Trump, CDC staffers were instructed to stop communicating with the organization.

Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget would, if approved, cut funding for the CDC’s Global Health Center by more than half, from $693 million to $293 million, according to the CDC Data Project.

“CDC is funded by U.S. tax dollars to protect the health of Americans, but there is no way to protect the health of Americans and turn a blind eye to global health,” O’Carroll said.

The CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit created in 1995 to fill “gaps in what CDC could do,” Brandon Talley, chief program and foundation officer, said at the book festival. The foundation has domestic and international programs and has worked in more than 100 countries.

Federal funding cuts have primarily impacted the foundation’s domestic work, said Amy Tolchinsky, associate vice president for communications.

The organization received Covid-19 supplemental funding from the federal government that was not renewed. It was using that money to support state and local public health agencies in hiring CDC Foundation staff members to work on local health needs, so when the funding ended, 90 staffers were laid off.

The foundation also laid off 32 additional people who work in the United States due to a decrease in other federal funds, Tolchinsky said.

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