The Metro: Michigan sickle cell research faces uncertain future with CDC cuts
Tia Graham, Robyn Vincent, The Metro May 19, 2025Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.
Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.
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Authors
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Tia Graham is a reporter and Weekend Edition Host for 101.9 WDET. She graduated from Michigan State University where she had the unique privilege of covering former President Barack Obama and his trip to Lansing in 2014.
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Robyn Vincent is the co-host of The Metro on WDET. She is an award-winning journalist, a lifelong listener of WDET, and a graduate of Wayne State University, where she studied journalism. Before returning home to Detroit, she was a reporter, producer, editor, and executive producer for NPR stations in the Mountain West, including her favorite Western station, KUNC. She received a national fellowship from Investigative Reporters and Editors for her investigative work that probed the unchecked power of sheriffs in Colorado. She was also the editor-in-chief of an alternative weekly newspaper in Wyoming, leading the paper to win its first national award for a series she directed tracing one reporter’s experience living and working with Syrian refugees.
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