The hotel ballroom was a full house as public health professionals gathered on Tuesday for the town hall “Dismantle, Dissolve, Deregulate: What Project 2025 Could Mean for Public Health.” 

Project 2025 is a blueprint for an incoming presidential administration created by more than 100 conservative groups. It is a partisan document that proposed agenda items that include a federal abortion ban, banning medication abortion, removing race and gender identity protections from federal codes, splitting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and more. 

Chris Chanyasulkit, an APHA past president, said she read the 900-page document and found a stunning lack of evidence-based research or peer-reviewed research supporting the proposals contained in it. One thing she noticed was the plan to “simplify the tax code,” which Chanyasulkit said was a euphemism for cutting taxes for the wealthy while raising taxes on middle- and low-income families. 

Additionally, the agenda laid out in Project 2025 would eliminate Head Start programs, end student loan forgiveness and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which Chanyasulkit said would undo any progress the U.S. has made on reducing carbon emissions. 

What can public health practitioners — and all Americans — do? According to Chanyasulkit, vote. 

“Vote in every election, from the school board to the mayor to your county or city council,” she said. “Make sure you know who they are and, more importantly, make sure they know who you are.”

While Project 2025 may seem to be only an amorphous concept at this point in time, Chanyasulkit said that there was a version of the plan in 2017 and that 64% of what was in it was enacted within the first year of former President Donald Trump’s term.

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said Project 2025 is full of anti-LGBTQ+ proposals that could erase existing protections and programs that protect the LGBTQ+ population, particularly transgender people.

It also proposes restructuring the federal workforce by replacing federal workers with political appointees whose ideology aligns with that expressed in Project 2025.

“No matter the result of the election next week, [Project 2025] is kind of a manifesto for the future of the country,” Graves said.

Paul Halverson, professor at the Oregon Health & Science University and Portland State University School of Public Health, said the Project 2025 agenda could compound existing problems in the public health field, including health insurance, preparation for the next health crisis and splitting the CDC into at least two agencies. While these items may need improvement, Halverson said the proposals in Project 2025 “aren’t what is needed.” 

Halverson addressed the audience, reminding them of their individual responsibilities, both as citizens of the U.S. and as public health professionals. He said public health’s role is not to make policy but to support and implement policies. 

“(Public health) is political because it uses public money, but it is not partisan,” he said. “There’s this illusion that good things only come from one political party or the other, but things don’t happen in a vacuum. As public health professionals, we need to show up with the facts and be that trusted voice.”

Deryck Spooner with Statler Nagle, which creates marketing and advocacy campaigns, described Project 2025 as a plan to leverage the government to marginalize certain groups of people. 

He described the plan as being “inside the Beltway,” meaning something important primarily to D.C. insiders. However, he said, policies enacted in the nation’s capital affect people across the country.

“People in rural areas feel like they are not involved in the political process, and people in some state governments are trying to leverage that disenchantment with the process,” he said. 

Photos: Past APHA President Chris Chanyasulkit; audience members. Photos courtesy EZ Event Photography.