The Trump administration eliminated a division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that focused on blood disorders such as sickle cell. That was recently reported by Outlier Media, and it’s big news for people here. 

That’s because metro Detroit is home to one of the largest groups of people with sickle cell disease in the country. The painful disease is caused by an inherited genetic mutation and most of the people who have it are Black.

Today on The Metro, we revisited a conversation Metro co-host Tia Graham and former WDET reporter Laura Herberg had about the disease last year with Koby Levin, a science reporter for Outlier Media, and Larenz Caldwell, a sickle cell patient who underwent a stem cell transplant six years ago. 

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.