Editor’s note: Federal Fallout is a Tribune-Democrat news series addressing the potential local impact of funding cuts.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Years of concerted efforts among local organizations to address the needs of the region’s most vulnerable residents are up against a wall of legislative challenges.
Facing potential federal funding cuts for housing, medical assistance, transportation, food programs and educational opportunities, community stakeholders are preparing to shift local philanthropic resources in ways that harken back to their response during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal Fallout logo
If the region sees federal funding streams dry up, organizations – including the 1889 Foundation, which alone supports more than 50 nonprofit health and human service initiatives with millions of local dollars each year – would have to pivot from funding initiatives geared toward long-term public health to help meet more immediate needs of the area’s population.
Sue Mann
Sue Mann
“We know that we are going to struggle, but together, we are going to figure it out,” 1889 Foundation President Susan Mann said. “There are groups and organizations with resources here, and we are going to figure out how to keep them here and grow them.”
Scores of local organizations have banded together in recent years around improving public health outcomes by focusing on priorities laid out in a comprehensive, collaborative analysis of Cambria and Somerset counties’ populations, resources, services and public health data.
The Community Health Needs Assessment, initiated in 2019 and updated every three years, is coordinated by the Center for Population Health along with Conemaugh Health System, the 1889 Foundation and the United Way of the Southern Alleghenies.
“We’ve been more collaborative in the past five, maybe even close to 10 years than we’ve probably ever been,” said Jeannine McMillan, executive director of the Center for Population Health.
Jeannine McMillan
Jeannine McMillan
“There’s some incredible work being done right now in both Cambria and Somerset counties to try to address some of the really dire health and human service outcomes in the region,” she said.
According to County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, Cambria and Somerset counties have more premature deaths, more people in poor health, more children living in poverty, and higher air pollution levels than statewide and national averages.
Squeeze from D.C.
A partial list of programs implemented since the initial 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment includes housing rehabilitation and stabilization programs, a community health worker program to provide care coordination for at-risk individuals, community diaper banks, early childhood initiatives to meet educational and health needs of children from birth to age 8, and expansion of food security and healthy food efforts.
FEDERAL FALLOUT | ‘Trips are life-sustaining’: CamTran Medicaid-funded program on schedule despite potential cuts
In a region where more than a quarter of residents receive Medicaid to pay for health care services and where doctors’ offices and pharmacies are far-flung across rural areas, public transportation is a key part of public health.
However, those same types of programs face a flurry of federal budget cuts set in motion by President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
Since beginning his new term in January, Trump’s efforts to reduce federal spending have led to long-term cuts, implemented or potentially on the table, that jeopardize numerous programs at the local level, the area leaders said.
Organizations working in early childhood interventions, federally reimbursed medical services, housing programs for people facing abuse or who are housing-insecure, transportation programs, federal tuition assistance for students seeking college education, job training and placement programs, and food assistance programs are a few experiencing funding snarls.
Morrell Neighborhood School | USDA Funding
Morrell Neighborhood School Pre-Kindergarten students play during a recess period at the school on Power Street in the Cambria City section of Johnstown on Wednesday, March 19, 2025.
Federal cuts would especially have an economic effect on Cambria and Somerset counties, where poverty rates are higher than many other parts of the state and nation, McMillan said.
In both Cambria and Somerset counties, more than 40% of the population lives on less than $50,000 annually, with the percentage in Cambria County closer to 50%, according to the Center for Population Health. And unemployment rates in both counties are at 5.4%, which is higher than the state and national averages.
Food security in focus
In Pennsylvania, 15.4% of residents receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to supplement their grocery budgets, the eighth-highest rate across the United States, according to a Trace One study.
SNAP usage is even higher in Cambria and Somerset counties: 20% of Cambria County’s population and 15% of the population in Somerset County receive support.
Karen Struble Myers
Karen Struble Myers
Across the region – including Cambria, Somerset and Blair counties – one in six children faces food insecurity, and even more qualify for free and reduced school lunches, said Karen Struble Myers, president and CEO of the United Way of the Southern Alleghenies, which distributes funding for food and shelter programs in Cambria County.
The United Way is the administrator for federal emergency food and shelter funding that comes into Cambria County.
“Those funds have not been released,” she said, “so we are operating at a zero balance for those organizations that would typically receive that.”
Many of the federal cuts are being heavily contested in court; however, Struble Myers said organizations are either having work delayed or are not moving forward with projects because of the risk to funding.
“I think one of the things as nonprofits that we have to look at is what balance of funding comes from what source, state, local or federal,” she said, “so we have to do an internal risk assessment to determine what work moves forward in the community.”
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