As the first-year cohort representatives of Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC, we are training to advance public health and sustain its fundamental role in a just and equitable society. However, recent actions of the federal administration have sought to undermine global public health infrastructure. These policy moves are also erasing jobs, scaring our instructors into a coercive form of not speaking out about the very topics they are experts in and threatening the future of our University.
Over the course of less than one month, the executive branch has actively dismantled years of scientific and social progress through systematic defunding and censorship. This includes eliminating publicly accessible research containing key terms like “trans,” “reproduction” and “diversity,” as well as issuing funding cuts to critical public health agencies such as the CDC, NIH and USAID. These actions demonstrate a clear disregard for evidence-based policymaking, endangering marginalized communities and undermining public trust in science.
Public health is under siege. Across the country, thousands of public health professionals and government employees are being dismissed for standing by science and ethics. At our own institution, faculty may face furloughs and research funding is being stripped away. Promised employment opportunities for our students are vanishing as financial support is pulled.
Women’s reproductive rights have been rolled back to a decades-old battleground. LGBTQ+ protections are rapidly eroding. Policies once grounded in scientific integrity are being rewritten by fear-mongering and authoritarian agendas. Public health cannot survive — let alone thrive — in an environment where facts are ignored, experts are silenced and entire communities are left behind. The worst part? When our public health infrastructure disappears and fails to keep people healthy and alive, we may not even know.
Luckily, UNC-Chapel Hill is uniquely poised to meet this moment. We are home to the top-ranked public school of public health in the country, with a mission "to improve public health, promote individual and community well-being and eliminate health inequities across North Carolina and around the world.”
We train to bring about positive, sustainable changes in health in a collaborative teaching and learning environment. We build, support and sustain a diverse, equitable and inclusive community to address historical and structural health inequities.
As students and the next generation of North Carolina, we stand resolute against policies that seek to divide, harm and silence. We commit to defending healthcare access, fighting for marginalized communities, and ensuring that science — not ideology — guides the path forward.
Even when our institutions are unable — or unwilling — to commit to health and equity, we as students can renounce the existential threats posed by the current administration. We will do everything in our power to ensure each individual, regardless of background, has the opportunity to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. We invite the UNC leadership to stand beside us. We will not be censored or erased. Public health matters because people matter.
- Sabrina Rahim and Nikita Wagner, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health students
