This year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been significantly weakened by repeated layoffs and internal upheaval, undermining its ability to protect the public from health threats and emergencies.
Employees say multiple rounds of reductions in force erased a large portion of the agency’s workforce. Aryn Melton Backus, who started the year as a health communications specialist, received termination notices in several separate rounds—colleagues dubbed them the Valentine’s Day, April Fool’s Day and shutdown cuts—yet she remains on administrative leave and cannot carry out her duties.
HHS officials argue the agency needs reform and say the secretary is committed to rebuilding it. Department spokespeople also maintain the CDC still carries out its mission to protect Americans using science and common-sense approaches.
Independent counts suggest the CDC lost roughly a quarter to a third of its staff this year, amounting to thousands of people. That shrinkage has forced the suspension of programs aimed at reducing smoking, preventing cavities and addressing gun violence. Teams trained for radiation emergencies and for investigating outbreaks linked to birth defects were among those let go.
In response, Backus and former colleagues organized the National Public Health Coalition to collect accounts from current and former employees, citing a lack of transparency from agency leadership. Coalition members and other staff describe low morale and alarm over public statements made in the CDC’s name that appear to contradict established scientific consensus on topics like vaccines, autism and measles.
Former senior vaccine official Demetre Daskalakis resigned in August and has characterized the agency as a shell with large, gaping gaps. He warned the CDC could be reduced to a much smaller operation focused mainly on infectious-disease response, some data work and laboratory functions. Daskalakis and former senior scientist Debra Houry have written that the agency is in critical condition.
Houry, who left in August as the last career scientist at the agency’s top levels, warned that recent leadership changes have left the CDC without needed experience in science and in coordinating with state and local health departments. She and others note that some shifts mirror recommendations from conservative policy plans and point to actions such as eliminating the agency’s ethics board while invoking commitments to high standards and transparency.
The Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed a new deputy director, Dr. Ralph Abraham, who served as Louisiana’s surgeon general. Some public health officials have expressed concern about that choice; earlier in the year Abraham restricted his state health department from promoting vaccines.
Staff and outside observers say the damage goes beyond lost jobs: the agency has suffered a loss of institutional trust and critical capacity at a time when strong public-health infrastructure is needed to prepare for future crises.
Reporting by NPR’s Pien Huang.