Cuts Threaten Colorado Program That Supports Pregnant and Postpartum Women

Due to the termination of $11 billion in public health grants, a grant to a program that provides Colorado residents with access to behavioral health and substance abuse support was disrupted, reports Healthcare Dive:

For [Racquel] Garcia, it looked like the early end of one of HardBeauty’s grants providing behavioral health and substance abuse support to women through pregnancy, birth and postpartum in Colorado’s Western Slope, a region with primarily rural and frontier counties.

Instead, it was the beginning of weeks of funding limbo complicated by a federal lawsuit filed by 23 states, including Colorado, as well as Washington, D.C., challenging the DOGE cuts. As it works its way through the courts, providers are notified periodically, sometimes week-to-week, about the status of the lawsuit, which will decide the fate of their funding for the rest of the grant period.

There has been some reprieve. A little over a week after the cuts were announced, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore the grants. 

But many providers are still grappling with significant questions about their funding, which provide crucial public health services like vaccine clinics and substance use recovery programs.