MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's been a tough year at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal agency tasked with protecting the nation's public health has been weakened by staff and budget cuts. NPR health correspondent Pien Huang takes stock.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Aryn Melton Backus started the year as a health communications specialist at CDC. Then the Trump administration started cutting jobs.
ARYN MELTON BACKUS: So you have their probationary one - that was the Valentine's Day massacre. Then you have the April Fool's Day RIF. And then some people call it the shutdown RIF, some people call it 10/10.
HUANG: RIF - meaning reduction in force. Backus got termination emails in all three rounds, but she's still getting a paycheck from CDC. She's on administrative leave.
BACKUS: So we're still, you know, not doing our jobs.
HUANG: It's a sign of the chaos. In an email, Andrew Nixon, 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 CDC continues to protect Americans from public health threats, guided by gold-standard science and common sense.
This year, the CDC has effectively lost a quarter to a third of its staff. That's thousands of people. Programs that aimed to reduce smoking or cavities or gun violence were stopped. Workers trained to respond to radiation emergencies or to outbreaks that cause birth defects are gone. To Backus, this is a public health emergency. She and former CDC staff have organized a response, like they've done for disease outbreaks. They gather reports from employees.
BACKUS: How do we collect data on what is being lost at CDC? - because there's not a lot of transparency coming out of the administration.
HUANG: HHS has declined to confirm numbers or areas that are cut, so Backus' group, called the National Public Health Coalition, is trying to fill the gap. She says CDC staffers are demoralized and appalled by statements about vaccines, autism, measles, which don't reflect the scientific consensus but are put out in the agency's name. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis resigned in August as a top vaccine official at CDC. He says the agency is not what it used to be.
DEMETRE DASKALAKIS: I keep calling CDC, like, a zombie 'cause it's a zombie.
HUANG: He says the first few rounds of cuts to the agency left gaps.
DASKALAKIS: If you had to sort of generate a map, it would be a map that's been eaten by moths because there's just random holes.
HUANG: Daskalakis says more recent cuts show where the CDC may be headed.
DASKALAKIS: Which is, like, a very compact thing that does infectious disease responses, maybe some data stuff and labs. That's it.
HUANG: He and his former boss, Dr. Debra Houry, co-wrote a piece 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, too, left in August. She says the CDC leadership now lacks important experience.
DEBRA HOURY: I really don't see how you can be overseeing priorities and objectives for the agency with zero experience in those areas.
HUANG: ...Such as in science and in dealing with state and local health departments. HHS has confirmed a new second-in-command for CDC - Dr. Ralph Abraham, who was surgeon general of Louisiana. But public health officials are alarmed. Earlier this year, Abraham banned the state health department from promoting vaccines. Houry says many of the changes at CDC track with the Project 2025 blueprint from the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
HOURY: Then I also feel like we're living in the upside-down world, with some of RFK Jr.'s statements around things like gold-standard science and radical transparency.
HUANG: ...Since he follows up by doing things like cutting the CDC's ethics board, she says. Houry says CDC has lost much more than jobs this year. It's losing trust and the ability to protect the nation from future health crises.
Pien Huang, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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