Head HHS ‘Climate Change’ Officer Vows to Resist Trump’s Reforms

John Balbus, who heads the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, says he is hardwiring his office’s work into the agency to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s vowed reforms of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Balbus’s plan of action entails senior executive service employees, who are the hardest to fire, creating and disseminating a global warming “training module” to all employees for “climate literacy.”

The goal is for his training module to remain even if Trump axes his Office of Climate Change and Health Equity.

“Health systems are recognizing that this is a business issue, this is a financial risk issue, that it’s a threat to the mission,” John Balbus told PoliticoPro on Monday.

PoliticoPro reported on the agency’s fear of Trump vow to purge the administrative state:

With President-elect Donald Trump’s second term looming, the leader of the climate change office that President Joe Biden created at the Department of Health and Human Services hopes its work can live on in atomized form.

Trump is expected to shutter the three-year-old HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, whose small staff focuses on efforts to communicate climate-driven risks to health-care operations and public health. The office has subsisted on staff detailed from other federal agencies.

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Yet Trump represents a threat to many of the initiatives Balbus’ office has touted because they rely on the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has vowed to reverse. Biden’s climate law has supplied key funding for health-care and hospital systems to improve their defense against the effects of climate change, particularly through direct payments supported by Treasury Department tax credits, Balbus said.