Months of tumult and waves of staff cuts take a toll on the CDC : NPR
After losing thousands of employees and facing attacks this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hampered in its ability to protect the public from health problems and emergencies.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It’s been a difficult year for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal agency charged with protecting the nation’s public health has been weakened by staff and budget cuts. Pien Huang, NPR health correspondent, takes stock.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Aryn Melton Backus started the year as a health communications specialist at the CDC. Then the Trump administration started cutting jobs.
ARYN MELTON BACKUS: So you have their probation – that was the Valentine’s Day Massacre. Then there’s the April Fool’s FRR. And then some people call it the shutdown RIF, some people call it 10/10.
HUANG: RIF – meaning reduction of force. Backus has received termination emails throughout all three series, but she still receives a paycheck from the CDC. She is on administrative leave.
BACKUS: So, you know, we’re still not doing our job.
HUANG: It’s a sign of chaos. In an email, Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, says the CDC has been broken for a long time and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is committed to restoring it as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health through sustained reform. Nixon added that the CDC continues to protect Americans from public health threats, guided by gold standard science and common sense.
This year, the CDC actually lost between a quarter and a third of its staff. That represents thousands of people. Programs aimed at reducing smoking, cavities or gun violence have been interrupted. Workers trained to respond to radiological emergencies or outbreaks causing birth defects have disappeared. For Backus, this is a public health emergency. She and former CDC staffers mounted a response, as they have during outbreaks. They collect reports from employees.
BACKUS: How do we collect data on what’s lost at the CDC? – because there is not much transparency on the part of the administration.
HUANG: HHS has refused to confirm the numbers or areas that were removed, which is why Backus’ group, called the National Public Health Coalition, is trying to fill that gap. She says CDC staff are demoralized and dismayed by statements about vaccines, autism and measles, which do not reflect scientific consensus but are issued in the agency’s name. Dr. Demeter Daskalakis resigned in August from her position as the CDC’s top vaccine official. He says the agency isn’t what it used to be.
DEMETRE DASKALAKIS: I keep calling CDC a zombie because it is a zombie.
HUANG: He says the first rounds of cuts at the agency left gaps.
DASKALAKIS: If you were to generate a map, it would be a map that had been eaten by moths because it only has random holes.
HUANG: Daskalakis says the more recent cuts show where the CDC could be headed.
DASKALAKIS: Which is, like, a very compact thing that deals with infectious disease responses, maybe data and labs. That’s it.
HUANG: He and his former boss, Dr. Debra Houry, co-wrote an article in the medical journal The Lancet saying the CDC is in critical condition. Houry was the last career scientist at the CDC’s highest levels until she left in August. She says CDC leaders now lack significant experience.
DEBRA HOURY: I really don’t see how you can oversee the priorities and goals of the agency without any experience in these areas.
HUANG: …Like in the scientific field and in relations with national and local health services. HHS confirmed a new second-in-command for the CDC: Dr. Ralph Abraham, who served as Louisiana’s surgeon general. But public health officials are alarmed. Earlier this year, Abraham banned the state health department from promoting vaccines. Houry says many changes at the CDC follow the Project 2025 plan from conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
HOURY: Then I also feel like we’re living in an upside-down world, with some of RFK Jr.’s statements about things like gold standard science and radical transparency.
HUANG: …Since he did things like abolishing the CDC ethics committee, she says. Houry says the CDC has lost more than just jobs this year. It means losing confidence and the ability to protect the nation against future health crises.
Pien Huang, NPR News.
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