Five key division leaders at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are leaving the public health agency as it braces for cuts that could affect as much as a third of its workforce. <\/p>\n
The departures, announced internally Tuesday, comprise the directors of the Public Health Infrastructure Center, the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, the Office of Science, the Office of Policy Performance and Evaluation and the Office of Health Equity, according to a person familiar with the situation, who declined to be named because the announcement wasn\u2019t made publicly. <\/p>\n
The Associated Press first reported the plans, which it said were described as retirements and announced at a meeting of senior agency leaders. <\/p>\n
The departures come as CDC staffers anticipate Reduction in Force notifications in the coming days that could cut staff and budget by as much as 30%, according to another CDC source who saw a draft of the plans and wasn\u2019t authorized to discuss them publicly. <\/p>\n
One staffer, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, said CDC employees worried that the division leaders\u2019 departures suggested that those centers and offices could be hit hard by cuts. <\/p>\n
The director of the CDC\u2019s Office of Communications, Kevin Griffis, also left the agency last week, and on Tuesday, he published an opinion essay in the Washington Post skewering Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s leadership of government health agencies. <\/p>\n
\u201cPublic health communications have slowed to a trickle,\u201d Griffis wrote. \u201cThe CDC hasn\u2019t held a public briefing, despite multiple disease outbreaks, since President Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration. <\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of seeking guidance about how to combat the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico from the world-leading epidemiologists and virologists he oversees, Kennedy is listening to fringe voices who reinforce his personal beliefs,\u201d Griffis continued, noting that he \u201cwatched as career infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy\u2019s preferred treatments.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cPublic health communications should be about empowering people with reliable, science-based information, so they can make their own health decisions,\u201d Griffis wrote. \u201cUnfortunately, we can\u2019t count on Kennedy\u2019s HHS for that anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Monday, Trump said he planned to nominate the agency\u2019s current acting director, Dr. Susan Monarez, as CDC director. Although some in the public health research community cheered the news, citing her long career of health work in the federal government, some agency staffers worried that she wouldn\u2019t sufficiently defend the agency against coming cuts. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Five key division leaders at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are leaving the public health agency as it braces for cuts that could affect as much as a third of its workforce. The departures, announced internally Tuesday, comprise the directors of the Public Health Infrastructure Center, the National Center on Birth Defects …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":507,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}