The public health community is rallying behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as it fights back against new attacks to its integrity — this time against its leaders.
On Thursday, public health supporters, CDC staff and the Atlanta community united to support top officials who resigned this week in opposition to actions by the Trump administration, lining up by the hundreds and cheering as the leaders exited an agency building. The crowd included dozens of members of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, who in unison saluted the health leaders in a show of strength.
The exodus came after newly appointed CDC director Susan Monarez, PhD, was fired Wednesday by Robert Kennedy Jr., secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services. Monarez' attorneys said she was removed for refusing to "rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts she chose, protecting the public health over serving a political agenda."
Monarez pushed back against Kennedy's continuing attempts to undermine vaccines, rebuffing his request to stand behind him and his advisors as they work to restrict access to the proven, life-saving public health tools, according to The New York Times.
APHA and the public health community blasted Monarez' firing, with APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, MD, reiterating his call for Kennedy's immediate removal.
"His tenure has been marked by chaos, disorganization and a blatant disregard for science and evidence-based public health," Benjamin said in a statement. "Pushing Monarez out underscores his administrative incompetence and his disdain for the expertise that the public and our public health agencies rely on. RFK Jr. must be removed from his position."
Other longtime leading CDC officials submitted their resignations in protest of the Trump administration actions and exited the agency this week. Leaving the building together Thursday were Debra Houry, MD, MPH, the agency’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease. Jennifer Layden, MD, PhD, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Science and Technology also resigned.
"What makes us great at CDC is following the science,” Jernigan told reporters Thursday as he left the building. “So let's get the politics out of public health. Let's get back to the objectivity and let the science lead us, because that's how we get back to the best decisions for public health."
Kennedy’s interference with CDC will cost lives, Wendy Armstrong, MD, FIDSA, a clinician who leads the infectious disease division at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a news conference the same day. Clinicians and public health departments rely on CDC for expertise on the latest information, but that is eroding, she said. CDC updates on bird flu, measles, COVID-19 and food-borne illnesses have mostly stopped.
“We don’t know what is out there because there is no surveillance,” Armstrong said.
Local public health organizations are also experiencing the downstream effects of the loss of expertise at CDC as well as massive cuts to public health funding by the Trump administration.
“We have lost several generations, those on staff and those in training (at CDC),” Armstrong said. “The impact of what we are seeing will last for decades.”
On Thursday, the White House named Kennedy’s deputy secretary, Jim O’Neill, as acting CDC director, replacing Monarez. O’Neill is a former Silicon Valley technology investor with no public health or medical experience.
As she left the building, Houry, a 20-year leader at CDC, called on Congress to intervene and stand behind public health, science and the agency.
"We need to have ethics back...We need to be able to do (our work) without interference," Houry told reporters. "I believe in our scientists. We need our leaders above us to believe in CDC."
Photo caption: From left, Daniel Jernigan, former director of CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease; Debra Houry, CDC's former chief medical officer; and Demetre Daskalakis, former director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases pose for photos outside CDC's Atlanta headquarters Thursday after all three resigned their positions this week. (Screenshot by Michele Late)