A groundbreaking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative to support harm-reduction groups across the country fell apart this month after the program came under the control of a federal contractor that has done no public health work for the government.

The National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance Center, or TA Center, was founded in 2019 as a coalition of harm-reduction groups partnered with the CDC to offer training, funding, and guidance to those working to reduce overdose deaths. Its success rested on the deep experience and the trust community members had for the three main partner organizations, which included the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD; the National Harm Reduction Coalition, or NHRC; the University of Washington’s Supporting Harm Reduction Programs; and a handful of other groups.

This month, the TA Center ceased functioning as it had for more than three years: Instead of a partnership, the project would be administered as a federal contract. And the CDC gave the sole-source contract to the Florida-based firm H2 PCI, a relatively new federal contractor with close links to the defense industry and the murky world of military special operations.

H2 PCI entered negotiations with the primary partners in the center to make them subcontractors but did not send proposed subcontracts to the groups until early November. Rushed by deadlines, those talks broke down in late November, according to Laura Guzman, executive director of NHRC.

As the H2 PCI contract went into effect on December 1, the primary partner organizations that had made the TA Center a success parted ways with the project, Guzman told The Intercept.

“From the beginning, it was clear that they had zero experience in the public health field and absolutely zero experience in harm reduction,” Guzman said. “It would be really challenging to work with a contractor who has zero understanding of our world.”

Advocates fear the takeover could wash away the years of painstaking work of building up the TA Center and sever its vital connection to on-the-ground harm reduction providers, making it harder for them to serve the people who rely on them for clean needles, naloxone, and other services, according to Maya Doe-Simkins, a veteran harm reductionist who has worked closely with the program.

“This will have lethal implications,” Doe-Simkins said. “I mean, people’s jobs are important, but in communities, it’s also an issue of life and death.”

The project broke down because of what harm-reduction experts said was the CDC’s mismanagement of the process to transition the TA Center to H2 PCI, an unwillingness from CDC brass to address the groups’ concerns about the firm, and what the partners considered H2 PCI’s unworkable subcontract requirements, according to numerous sources formerly involved in the TA Center, including Guzman and others who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity because they still collaborate with the CDC on other public health projects.

The sources expressed concerns about the upstart H2 PCI’s lack of experience doing health work with the federal government. “From the beginning, we asked point-blank: ‘Do you have public health expertise?’” said Guzman. “And the answer was ‘no.’ Definitely logistics and communications, but really absolutely foreign to our world of nonprofit capacity building.”

The sources also questioned H2 PCI’s close ties to Advanced C4 Solutions, or AC4S, a larger defense contractor that has done more than half a billion dollars in federal contracts.

In a statement to The Intercept, Norm Abdallah, the CEO of both H2 PCI and AC4S, praised his firm’s track record and directed further questions to the CDC. “We have built a reputation for being able to deliver a superlative work product and we are excited to undertake the........

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