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Public health in the face of trauma and violence
And what you can do
Katelyn Jetelina, Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD, and Megan Ranney
"It’s been a struggle to process what happened at the CDC just a few days ago. The facts are coming in: one officer died, 500 rounds fired, 200 bullets made contact with 6 CDC buildings, hundreds of staff sheltered in place for hours. The intention is undeniable: this was an attempted massacre.
"The state of the world feels unrecognizable. We are living headline to headline, tragedy to tragedy. The bar for shock has been set so high that there are ten other stories deemed more urgent, more outrageous, than hundreds of bullets hitting a federal building. So many people don’t even know this happened. That’s not normal. Our world is swallowed whole by the endless churn of violence and crisis we’ve come to accept as ordinary. We are drowning in the abnormal, yet forced to carry on our “normal” lives, living in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.
"It feels deeply unfair. Unfair as members of the public who feel completely powerless over the systems that continue to fail us and, at times, betray us. As parents trying to navigate through the noise and uncertainty, as concerned citizens watching our nation go numb to violence and death, as workers mourning both a loss of life in the case of Officer Rose and a loss of any semblance of safety at work.
"It’s exhausting. The public health field has been the punching bag for six straight years, yet some of us are the very ones who are trying to change and reimagine the systems. Many of us are choosing listening over judgment—seeking to build bridges and understand those who have felt marginalized by health policies. To extend empathy and then be met with bullets feels demoralizing, to put it mildly.
"It’s deeply angering. Watching those who fan the flames ignore the consequences when hostile rhetoric turns to physical violence. Words matter. From statements from public officials to casual posts on Facebook, language of hate, vitriol, and the vilification of an entire professional field have contributed to this moment.
"And it’s lonely. The silence. The absence. The indifference. Without genuine acknowledgment or visible solidarity from federal leadership, the weight of this moment feels even heavier and, at times, permissive.
"Trauma doesn’t move at the same pace for everyone. For those closest to it, the moment freezes in time—every sound, every detail etched in memory. A step further out, people feel the shock and recognize the pain, but find words clumsy and insufficient. Beyond that, the world either moves on quickly or never even realizes it happened. That dissonance—between the depth of the experience and how fast it fades from public consciousness—can make the loss feel even heavier, the isolation even sharper. The sheer volume of trauma is such that everyone cannot fully empathize with every event. Never in human history have we had so much real-time access to tragedy, and it overloads people. People can only bear so much.
For us in public health, where do we go from here?
"Those of us in public health signed up for one overarching mission: to help people. We show up every day to analyze data, predict disease patterns, inform policy, or treat patients to improve the health of our communities—not to figure out how to respond to violent attacks on our workplaces. It’s absolutely not fair. And it’s not normal.
"But it’s also the time we find ourselves in, and we all have to decide how we’re going to respond. (Gandalf said it better here.) The first step is to pause, grieve, and process. That’s what we did on Sunday night here on Substack Live (see recording above). It’s ok to not be ok, and it’s critical that we take the time to process what is happening. And then, in solidarity with our community, we act—with each other, for each other.
To the public, what can you do?
"We received a lot of comments during this Substack Live, and the most common question was ‘what can we do to help?’ We partnered with Nelba Marquez Greene (licensed therapist, Yale scholar, and mother of Sandy Hook victim) and put our heads together for you, and this is where we landed:
Support the family of the fallen officer.
A law enforcement officer gave his life protecting CDC employees that day. If you’re able, contribute directly to his family through the CDC Foundation.Write in to support public health workers.
For this post, we turned on the comments section for everyone. Drop a note in there, and I will compile for CDC employees. Another option is a handwritten note or heartfelt email. It can mean more than you think. We created a template to make it easy—you can adapt it, sign it, and send it to someone who has shown up for your community.Understand and acknowledge secondhand trauma.
Learn the steps you can take as an individual and/or in the workplace to mitigate the impact of secondary trauma.
Humanize healthcare workers, public health workers, and scientists.
Share a story of a public health success in your community, or highlight the person behind it. Maybe we even need someone to jumpstart a campaign like Hero and Human to highlight the fact that health workers are both, while demanding systems change.Learn the warning signs and tools for crisis prevention.
Educate yourself about Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) and other tools to intervene when someone poses a danger to themselves or others.
Resist dehumanizing the “other side.”
There’s nothing quite as dehumanizing as violence—actions that say “your life doesn’t matter.” As humans, when we’re under attack, it’s so easy to respond by treating our attackers as a two-dimensional villain. This may feel justified in the moment, but ultimately, it can continue the cycle that drives polarization and violence even more. Refusing to dehumanize our attackers (both physical and verbal) breaks the cycle. This doesn’t mean pretending things are ok, tolerating mistreatment, or not responding—but it does mean treating people with dignity in our responses, even when they aren’t affording us the same treatment. This does two things: 1. It stops escalation, and 2. It shines a brighter light on the reality of their mistreatment, because it’s contrasted with our response demanding dignity and respect for all humans.
"Even in the middle of this grief and exhaustion, resilience is everywhere. We’ve seen colleagues show up for each other in ways that matter. Some outside of the “public health bubble” have also spoken out, including a grassroots leader of the MAHA Movement and a former U.S. Surgeon General (from the first Trump administration). These may feel like small acts and certainly haven’t been a chorus, but they are seeds. And history tells us that seeds can grow into movements. Every action, no matter how small, helps build a culture where violence has no place and the public’s health can thrive.
Bottom line
"The 500 bullets that hit the CDC were aimed at more than buildings. It is heartbreaking, deeply angering, lonely, and, unfortunately, unsurprising. It will require all of us taking action so that the next generation inherits a country where directing bullets at health workers is unthinkable.
"Love, YLE, KP, and MR"
Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE is a public health newsletter that reaches over 380,000 people in more than 132 countries, with one goal: to translate the ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members.
Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD is an emergency medicine physician completing a combined residency and research fellowship focusing on health literacy and communication. She is the creator of the newsletter You Can Know Things and a regular YLE contributor.
Megan Ranney, MD MPH is an emergency physician, researcher, and Dean of the Yale School of Public Health.
Views expressed belong to KP and MR, not their employer.
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