The World Trade Center Health Program’s understaffing has stalled grant funding, delayed program enrollment and halted the certifications of new conditions to be covered by the program, the FDNY’s top doctor told The Chief in an interview earlier this month.
As recently as January 2025, the WTCHP “was just moving along in an outstanding manner,” said Dr. David Prezant, the FDNY's chief medical officer since 2010. But then in March 2025 the Trump administration, led by Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr., gutted the program, firing more than a dozen WTCHP staffers and Dr. John Howard, the program's administrator and the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
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