We Were Just Getting Started: Grieving the Loss of a Public Health Team - Voices #12
A seasoned leader in behavioral health reflects on his unexpected departure from federal service, mourning the loss of potential and calling for renewed support for public service professionals.
We continue our series Voices from the Field: Meeting This Moment in Public Health in which we lift the voices of public health professionals reflecting on the realities we’re facing today - and the lessons learned across the arc of their careers.
A behavioral health specialist reflects on his path from directing a nonprofit to leading a high-impact, mission-driven team in federal service. Laid off in the recent cuts, he expresses grief and anger over the systemic failure to retain dedicated public servants and calls for collective action to restore trust and support for the public health workforce.
If you’d like to follow Scott’s lead and share your own perspective on public health in these times, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch!
We Were Just Getting Started: Grieving the Loss of a Public Health Team
By Scott M. Gagnon MPP, PS-C
I loved my job. I loved my team. And then, suddenly, it was over.
Hi, I’m Scott. I have worked in behavioural health for nearly two decades, with a focus on addiction and overdose prevention. Throughout my career - from prevention coordinator to nonprofit director and beyond - I’ve been guided by a commitment to collaboration, innovation, and service. I believe in building programs that make a real difference for youth, families and communities.
For years, I led a Maine-based nonprofit that provided training, technical assistance, and leadership development to the behavioral health workforce across New England. I took the job out of ambition, but I stayed because I fell in love with the work. More than anything, I loved supporting and developing staff — watching our team take pride in what we built together. I never liked being called “Boss,” but I did love being a boss.
Eventually, I accepted a federal role as Region 1 Director for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). I joined a “small but mighty” team of four that supported six states in advancing equitable, culturally responsive behavioral health programs. It was meaningful, mission-driven work. Every day, we showed up ready to dream and build — together.
We were just getting started.
In only eight months, we made real progress. We supported behavioral health systems through regional workgroups on recovery, suicide prevention, and the 988 lifeline; we promoted access to life-saving naloxone; and we promoted local innovation through community site visits. We were committed to lifting up the people and programs that make behavioral health care more effective and equitable across the region.
But the truth is, we were robbed of doing so much more. Not just me — we. Our whole team. And our country was robbed too.
Because instead of continuing to serve, we’re shopping our resumés on Indeed.com.
Instead of promoting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, we’re on hold with the unemployment office.
Instead of convening state leaders to share life-saving overdose data, we’re refreshing our inboxes and hoping for a callback.
We didn’t walk away from public service. We were taken out of it. That loss hurts. And it should matter to everyone — not just to those of us who were let go. Because a system that discards skilled, compassionate public health professionals isn’t just failing us — it’s failing the people we were trained and ready to serve.
Now, we the helpers need help.
We need to turn this around. We need to fight for the public health and behavioral health systems this country deserves — and for the workforce that can actually deliver it.
We’re not asking for pity. We’re asking for the chance to finish what we started — to keep building systems that save lives and support communities. Because when the work stops, it’s not just careers that are disrupted. It’s care. It’s progress. It’s people.
Scott M. Gagnon is a behavioral health professional with expertise in youth substance use prevention, cannabis policy and prevention, and workforce development. He is the founder of Dirigo Empowerment Institute, LLC, which provides training, technical assistance, and consulting services to communities and organizations addressing addiction and overdose. He also publishes political and social commentary from a prevention perspective at The Radical Preventionist.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the views of any organization, employer, or institution with which they are affiliated.
If you would like to follow Scott’s example by sharing your perspective on public health right now in our series Voices from the Field: Meeting This Moment in Public Health, please get in touch!
Action steps - a note from Katie
Thank you for reading this newsletter for and about the public health workforce. At this tumultuous time, I’m still really not sure where we go from here. But each time that I publish this newsletter and receive positive feedback from readers, my list of ideas for action steps continues to grow. I will start to compile these suggestions here. As we learn more, let’s keep adding to this list:
Do Scott’s words above inspire you? Would you also like to share your perspective on public health right now? Or write a love letter to public health? Got something to say to or about the public health workforce? Got big feelings about the RIFs or the RTO or the EOs or the BS? I would love to publish your words here as a step towards advocacy and support. Get in touch.
Let’s communicate what public health is and why it matters that so many of us have been forced to leave our jobs. What is your proudest moment in public health? Complete this form to submit your public health story to be used for advocacy.
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I close by emphasising what I said in a previous newsletter:
“At this time of uncertainty for the public health workforce, let’s remember our commitment to science and evidence and data. We know that validating emotions and baggage has a place too, but we need to be able to identify them and distinguish opinion from fact.
Let’s recommit to kindness and mutual support for the public health workforce and beyond. If leaders are trying to sow divisions among us, the best we can do is to respond with empathy, and by strengthening, connecting, and lifting up one another.
Right now, the best I can offer my fellow public health professionals is a place* to gather and reflect and share and vent and organize and ask questions and offer support to one another. We’re going to need that now more than ever.”
*This is a plug for the Public Health Connections Lounge on LinkedIn, where we seek to build community and conversation among public health professionals. Join us.
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