Serving a Nation That Does Not Serve Us: A Federal Worker’s Reflection

The views and opinions expressed in this piece are solely my own and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of my employer, the federal government, or any affiliated institutions. This is a personal reflection on my experiences and perspectives as an individual working in the field of healthcare research.

These days.

These days, the world changes as the Trump administration pushes strange demands and astonishing new orders across my desk. My colleagues are being terminated, research contracts expiring without renewal, funding eliminated or reduced, multimillion-dollar grants screeching to a halt because we no longer have a Principal Investigator to manage study activities and ensure proper adherence to ethics-board approved protocols. People, good people who have spent many, many years serving our nation, slip away quietly, and the silent space that they leave behind is dark and foreboding. We find out who is gone by word of mouth, long after their departure.

As a federal employee at the Seattle-Denver VA Center of Innovation, I have been doing my best to put my head down and continue to work on the research I can, the projects I love, with folks who volunteer their time and knowledge to further our mission of improving national healthcare. I work with sick elderly…