The Health Department’s Chronic Disease Prevention team operates the Community Asthma Program (CAP), an intervention strategy aimed at reducing the number of children and youth in Baltimore between the ages of 2 and 18 who have trouble controlling their asthma. Through CAP, community health workers offer asthma education and visit the homes of young asthma patients.

In July, the Department of Health and Human Services mailed notices to 81 schools, public health departments and community centers that received funding through the program with an update: The grants were being cancelled, and the program, which has had an annual cost of $101 million in recent years, would be shuttered in a matter of months.

“It made no sense,” said Dr. Leana Wen, commissioner for Baltimore City Health Department. “Congress appropriated the funding that was available.”

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If you hear members of Congress tell it, this is really the moment that federal lawmakers are taking the opioid epidemic seriously. “Many of these policies seem to be tinkering around the edges,” Dr. Leana Wen, the health commissioner of Baltimore, told me. 

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President Donald Trump on Monday rolled out his three-part plan to tackle the opioid epidemic -- including some programs long championed by public health advocates -- but it's the proposal to impose the death penalty on drug traffickers that has raised the most eyebrows.

Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore City Health Commissioner, said "The war on drugs has not worked," she said. "The last thing we need is to further criminalize the disease of addiction. We need for everyone to understand addiction is a disease, that treatment exists and recovery is possible."

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