CDC to disburse delayed funds including for overdose prevention, staffers say

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be able to fully fund the Overdose Data to Action or OD2A program ahead of a key budget deadline, according to a CDC senior leader. A second CDC staff member confirmed that “there have been developments and we are likely to have full funding,” although they did not have details on when the funding would become available.

Previously frozen funding for other CDC programs, including rape and domestic violence prevention, is also getting released, the senior CDC leader said.

The senior leader described the process like receiving money “with an eyedropper.”

Without a pot of money to distribute out to various centers and divisions, the CDC couldn’t send out the notice of awards that state and local health departments need to be able to do their work and know they will be reimbursed for it.

Health departments across the country sounded the alarm as deadlines approached or passed for CDC funding of HIV prevention, cancer registries and overdose prevention programs.

Now, most of those programs across CDC apparently can continue, including OD2A. Grantees for the OD2A program, who had been told in July they would be receiving only half of their funding, will soon be told they will receive the full amount, according to the senior leader at CDC.

The news comes after advocates had been warning for weeks of the harms that delayed or partial funding to the program could have. “Every delay, every spending freeze — these translate to lost time and lives,” Sharon Gilmartin, director of the Safe States Alliance, a public health advocacy group, told reporters at a press conference on Monday.

But there’s a new funding challenge. Several dozen specific CDC programs have now had their budget lines frozen at the direction of OMB, according to the senior leader at CDC. The news of the frozen funds was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The frozen programs are mostly in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, according to the senior leader at CDC.

Funding for five programs at the CDC’s Injury Center was frozen by OMB as well, including youth violence prevention, adverse childhood experiences, firearm injury, injury control research centers, and injury prevention activities.

There were whole teams fired during the dramatic reduction in force across HHS in April that appear to have full funding, the senior leader says, such as the Rape Prevention and Education Program.

Similarly, there are programs with their budget lines frozen by OMB that are fully staffed, and still other priorities set forth in President Trump’s 2026 budget, they say, which leaves the impression that there’s no overarching strategy.