University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa announces biostatistics hire; The Sick Times reports CDC's wastewater program is running out of 2021 funds

The Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa published a welcome notice introducing Dr. Justin Van Ee, an incoming Assistant Professor of Biostatistics whose listed specialties are data integration, Bayesian hierarchical modeling and computational statistics. The retrieved text of that notice carries no publication date of its own; the date of August 8, 2026 appears in the page address, not in the body this desk read.

The notice states that at the department he "plans to develop novel computational methods for wastewater surveillance and recreational water monitoring", and that such methods could help identify epidemiological thresholds and strengthen water quality monitoring throughout the Hawaiian Islands. Van Ee said, "My research aligns closely with UH Mānoa's commitment to addressing pressing challenges facing Hawaiʻi through interdisciplinary, data-driven science," according to the notice.

The department states that he received his statistics doctorate from the University of Colorado in 2023 and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Montana and the University of Texas at Austin. It also states that his earlier work has been used to estimate the abundance of a federally protected species and to map where brook trout occur across the eastern United States.

That is the claim half of this piece, and it is a modest one: a department describing what a new hire intends to work on. The record half is about the two data streams named in that sentence, and what public documents say about the money behind them.

The record, part one: the wastewater stream

Writing in the Emerging Infectious Diseases supplement dated September 2026, authors publishing under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that the agency currently receives data from about 1,500 wastewater sampling sites across all 50 states, seven territories and some tribal communities. The same passage states that analytic flexibility "requires a sustained national wastewater surveillance system" along with continued investment and ongoing evaluation of coverage. The retrieved excerpt begins mid-argument with the words "that flexibility", so what precedes the requirement is not visible in the snapshot this desk holds.

The Sick Times, at a page whose address carries the date June 30, 2026, reported that the National Wastewater Surveillance System is running out of the funds Congress allocated to it in 2021, and that science and health organizations are pressing Congress for dedicated funding in CDC's annual budget starting with fiscal year 2027, which begins on October 1, 2026. The same snapshot contains the figure "at least $120 million in the CDC's 2027 budget". In the retrieved text that phrase stands as a fragment with no subject and no verb: nothing in the excerpt this desk holds says who is seeking that amount or that it is the size of the ask described in the preceding sentence. The number is reported here as it appears, and no further.

The record, part two: beach monitoring

The second stream sits on the other side of the appropriations line. The Environmental Protection Agency's Beach Grants page states that EPA awards grants under the BEACH Act to eligible states, territories and Tribes with ocean and Great Lakes coasts so they can monitor beaches and notify the public when swimming is not safe. The page's retrieved text carries a heading covering "Beach Grants from Fiscal Year 2001 through 2026" but no dollar figures in the body this desk read, so no annual allocation is asserted here.

The Surfrider Foundation states that "the President's Budget for FY2026 proposed to eliminate all funding for this critical public health program". In the retrieved snapshot that sentence opens the text, so the program named by "this critical public health program" has no visible antecedent; the surrounding page identifies the campaign as a BEACH Act one, but the snapshot alone does not supply the referent. Surfrider further states that without continued federal money, "programs in many coastal states would stop completely", and that other states would shorten sampling seasons or test fewer beaches, less often.

An EPA news release describes the same grant authority, stating that EPA awards BEACH Act grants to state, territorial and Tribal applicants so they and local partners can monitor coastal beach water quality, and it names Hawaii among the Pacific Southwest recipients. The release's title reports a dollar total; that figure does not appear anywhere in the body text retrieved for this piece, so this article does not state it.

Analysis

Here is the synthesis that no single document supplies, because none of these pages references any other. One sentence in a routine welcome notice names two federal data streams together, as though they carried the same weather. The public record for August 2026 says they do not. One is described by a reporting outlet as spending down a 2021 appropriation with a request pending for the fiscal year that starts October 1, 2026. The other survived a proposed elimination: the elimination was in a budget proposal, and EPA's own grants page still lists a series running through fiscal year 2026.

The distinction matters more than the blanket phrase "federal cuts" allows. A proposed cut and an enacted one are different objects, and a program with an expiring supplemental is in a different position from one carried in a recurring line. Note also that the agency making the published methodological case for sustained wastewater surveillance is the same agency whose program is described as running short.

A research plan in a welcome notice is a plan, not a promise, and none of the funding record is a judgment about the person named in it. The accountable actors in the money half of this story are budget writers and appropriators, not an incoming faculty member.

What could not be checked

• Neither the university notice nor The Sick Times report carries a publication date in its retrieved body text. Both dates used above come from the pages' addresses.
• The dollar total in the EPA news release exists in this evidence base only in the release's title and address. The retrieved body carries no figure, so none is stated here.
• The $120 million figure appears in its snapshot without a subject or a verb, as noted above.
• The Surfrider elimination sentence opens its snapshot with no visible antecedent for the program it names.
• This desk holds no Hawaiʻi state-level records for either program. State health department pages on wastewater surveillance and beach monitoring are not part of this evidence base, and no retrieval log in it documents why. Treat that as an absence of evidence, not as evidence of a state-level gap.
• No contract dates, site counts for Hawaiʻi, or fiscal 2026 allocation totals are asserted, because no snapshot here carries them.

A checkable prediction

By March 31, 2027, EPA's Beach Grants page will carry a fiscal year 2027 entry extending the series it currently lists through 2026, and the National Wastewater Surveillance System will not yet appear as a dedicated, named line in an enacted fiscal 2027 CDC appropriation. Both halves are checkable against public documents on that date. If either is wrong, this passage is wrong.

Comment

This desk did not seek comment from the university department or from the named faculty member; the announcement is quoted as published and no claim here is adverse to either. CDC, EPA and the Surfrider Foundation are represented by their own published pages, and no comment was requested from them.