President Trump has, in his first six weeks in office, made dangerous decisions regarding the public healthcare system, threatening all Americans’ health and wellbeing.
On Jan. 20 of this year, he issued an executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO provides important surveillance to alert countries of possible outbreaks that could become health emergencies. This role is crucial for preventing future pandemics like COVID-19 from breaching our borders, and international borders around the world. Without this organization, we risk being endangered by widespread sickness and disease. Additionally, we will not have access to samples used to make vaccines to combat these viruses when they do happen. Even though a president’s executive orders may seem otherworldly to us as students, we risk another COVID-19-like shutdown without adequate cooperation and collaboration between countries to prevent it, which was what WHO provided. One of the reasons Trump cited for withdrawing was that he believed the US was paying an unfair share of member fees to the organization. But administrations in the past have seen value in these WHO investments, because it provides more protection and priority from the organization if disease or crisis were to break out in the U.S.. That is why we pay so much in voluntary fees beyond just our required member fees. Because we pay more, we get more out of the organization and have more sway in its decisions. Regardless, just because we pay more than other countries doesn’t mean that we have to abandon WHO altogether. Now we will not have a seat at the table for important health discussions. We will not have a say in the plans to respond to diseases.
Our withdrawal means WHO will be less funded, and people all around the world will be more susceptible to disease. Dr. Michael Osteholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota said “We in the U.S. don’t experience many of the infectious diseases we see around the world in large part because they are stopped in these countries, oftentimes through the support and coordination of the WHO.” Now, we don’t have this protection.
But Trump’s administration doesn’t stop there with the executive orders against American healthcare, even affecting our LGBTQ+ peers. The current presidential administration has already censored health language and resources that had previously been readily available. Trump recently signed an executive order titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which states that gender is determined solely by biological sex, and prohibits federal funds from being used to promote gender ideology, among other things. The Trump administration’s definition of gender ideology is the idea that there is a spectrum of genders disconnected from one’s sex. Any funding used to promote this idea, even in education, is prohibited. In response to this, many agencies began purging web pages addressing LGBTQ+ health, or (according to the New York Times) simply just having words such as, “pregnant person,” “L.G.B.T” and “transgender.”The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) under the CDC, was one of those websites. The system is used to monitor adolescent health behaviors. Although a federal judge ruled that web pages taken down because of this executive order were to be put back up and YRBSS has since been reinstated, a concerning message lives on the top of the webpage: “Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children.”
YRBSS helps gather important data from students in grades 9-12 that is used to create programs to address issues found in the surveys. The system monitors health risk behaviors such as tobacco use, alcohol use, drug use, STI’s, unhealthy diets, and physical inactivity. Data has been collected through the system for 30 years. The surveys are also used to find information on the statistics of LGBTQ+ mental health, finding, for example, that “In 2023, female students and LGBTQ+ students experienced more violence, signs of poor mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors than their male and cisgender and heterosexual peers.” Merely because the survey collects data on gender identity and sexual orientation, the Trump administration does not support it. This message casts doubt on credible health statistics and on government organizations like the CDC that are needed to address issues regarding American citizens’ well-being.
This shows the lengths that Trump is willing to go to sacrifice the health of people in the US just to force his beliefs on the American people. Even if you don’t identify as LGBTQ+, this raises concerns about what information Trump will further censor. Additionally, according to The New York Times, a webpage on Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits “discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics), in covered health programs or activities,” was also briefly shut down. This shows the extent of Trump’s views on who has a right to healthcare. Even if you aren’t LGBTQ+, you have reason to worry. Everyone deserves to have access to health resources and information, and the censorship of websites like these threatens that right.
Even though we reside in a liberal state, hospitals in California were affected by the executive order. The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles briefly paused its hormone treatments for trans youth because the executive order said the federal government would not provide funding for transition-related healthcare.
Not even California is safe from Donald Trump’s policies. No one is.
