Earlier this week, Winter Storm Stella charged through Baltimore, leaving behind enough snow and ice to halt many operations across the city. However, we know that there’s no such thing as a “snow day” in public health.  

Starting on Monday, our Office of Public Health Preparedness & Response (OPHPR) worked around the clock to get us ready for the storm, while our medical transportation team expanded services to ensure our residents received life-sustaining treatments such as dialysis and chemotherapy, and ourSchool Health team coordinated nurses to ensure they were ready and available if the city needed to set up emergency shelters.

During the storm Tuesday, our BCHD team staffed the Emergency Operations Center to ensure residents were able to receive life-saving health services and worked with health care facilities to ensure that they did not lose power and could continue to serve patients. Meanwhile, our Animal Services team braved the severe weather to ensure that our animal residents were safe, as our Aging Services team prepared and delivered meals for at-risk seniors throughout the city.

I want to thank all of our team for their exemplary service to our city during this latest storm. In public health we understand the critical importance of agile responses to emergencies, whether they are weather storms or disease outbreaks like Ebola and Zika, in protecting our residents.

That is why federal funding sources like the Prevention and Public Health Fund are so critical. The Fund, which constitutes nearly one-seventh of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's budget, is used to prevent diseases such as hypertension, cancer and diabetes, which are drivers of the major causes of death in the United States. They also help ensure that our nation is prepared against emerging threats such as bioterrorism and infectious diseases.

This lifesaving investment is now at risk of being eliminated in the current Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal proposal. Cutting these funds will hurt patients' health and compromise our country's ability to protect residents.

In the Baltimore Sun this week, I wrote how this ACA replacement plan will roll back gains for millions of Americans and be detrimental to health and well-being of our nation. It is fiscally irresponsible and a national security risk.

On the frontlines of medical care, I don’t see a policy, but its impact on people’s lives. I have seen my patients’ suffering as they strive for healthcare access. Like other expecting moms, I hope more than anything to have a healthy child. I am fortunate to have access to high-quality, affordable health care. Unfortunately, that's not the case for all mothers of the nearly 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year. As I recently wrote in NPR, this ACA "replacement" plan will force women, children, and families to make life-and-death choices based on ability to pay.

The ACA has provided a safety net for millions and the mechanism to ensure a healthier, more secure, and financially stable future for America. We must do everything we can to safeguard life for Baltimore's residents, and for our generations to come.

Sincerely,

Leana Wen, M.D., M.Sc.