Emphasizing fiscal responsibility and eliminating any misuse of taxpayer dollars should be a priority of any government administration. However, RF-DASH is one of those programs that will be lost as collateral in these larger initiatives.
In order to ensure the efficient use of US taxpayer dollars, US the Congress and Executive Branch have proposed and executed cuts to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (CDC-NIOSH). These cuts have begun with reductions-in-force within NIOSH and its extramural programs which fund our work. As a result of these cuts, we anticipate that Rural Firefighters Delivering Agricultural Safety and Health program (RF-DASH), currently budding as a national program with its first full-time trainer, would be reduced in scope and impact by more than half.
Please review the following letter from the RF-DASH Team. It is also available for download. We would appreciate it if you would share the letter with persons in your network.