Two former senior leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are warning that government cuts will hurt the agency’s ability to protect Americans’ health.
Among other things, cuts this year eliminated the annual public awareness campaign that reminds people to get their flu vaccine each year. The CDC is like an “organism” that works together, said Demetre Daskalakis, the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“They continue to cut deeply into muscle,” said Daskalakis. “Soon all that’s going to be left is bone and articulations that won’t be able to do the work.”
Hundreds of people were fired over the weekend, said Debra Houry, the former chief medical officer.
“It’s concerning for how the agency is going to function,” Houry said in a Wednesday press call hosted by the advocacy group Defend America Action.
But Health and Human Services officials defended the recent staff layoffs and said they are a direct consequence of a “Democrat-led” government shutdown.
“HHS continues to eliminate wasteful and duplicative entities, including those inconsistent with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” Emily G. Hilliard, HHS press secretary, told Capital News Service in an email.
Their remarks came amid escalating turmoil at the CDC following the August departure of Director Susan Monarez. She told a Senate committee she had refused political directives from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because she thought they were jeopardizing her scientific integrity. Monarez’s departure has triggered other resignations, including both Daskalakis and Houry.
Kennedy is undertaking a consolidation of the nation’s top public health agencies in an effort to “do more with less.” He aims to consolidate 28 HHS divisions to 15, reduce regional offices from 10 to five and create a new Administration for a Healthy America to remove “redundant” programs, according to an HHS press release.
In their press call, Daskalakis and Houry described a domino effect happening inside the agency. They said the administration is shuffling programs, reassigning staff and leaving essential functions uncovered.
“If there’s a critical function that was cut, CDC will move other people to fill that critical function,” Daskalakis told reporters during the press call. “Which means the dominoes fall and the function that that person has been moved from is no longer going to be tended to.”
He said the silencing and downsizing of CDC has left the agency unprepared not only for daily public-health work, but also for emergencies.
Daskalakis said the agency’s 2023 anti-flu campaign has not been replaced. The CDC’s 2023 “Wild to Mild” public awareness campaign promoted vaccines as reducing illness severity. But it was taken down early in Kennedy’s tenure after HHS shifted its vaccine messaging toward “informed consent.”
“There’s already been damage done in terms of CDC’s ability to communicate around seasonal vaccinations, including flu,” Daskalakis said. “The removal of key folks in communications, key folks in policy – the effect is going to be even less communication that is critical, both for local health departments and for (people) on the street.”