This year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen large-scale staff losses and organizational upheaval that many career employees say are degrading its ability to protect public health and respond to emergencies. Thousands of positions have been eliminated, amounting to roughly a quarter to a third of the agency’s workforce, according to former staff and public-health observers.
Aryn Melton Backus joined CDC in early 2024 as a health communications specialist. She says the agency carried out multiple rounds of job cuts — in February, April and again around the government shutdown — and that she received termination notices each time; she is currently on administrative leave and not performing her duties. Backus and other former employees have launched the National Public Health Coalition to collect and document accounts from current and former staff, aiming to fill gaps left by limited public information from the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon has acknowledged deep problems at the agency and said Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to reform and restore the CDC, asserting that the agency continues to protect Americans based on sound science. Many career public-health officials disagree, saying the recent cuts and policy shifts are already hollowing out key programs and expertise.
According to staff accounts and program reports, initiatives targeting smoking cessation, dental cavities and gun-violence prevention were paused or scaled back. Specialized teams trained to respond to radiation incidents or outbreaks that can cause birth defects have been reduced or eliminated. Former senior officials warn these losses diminish the CDC’s ability to detect, investigate and contain future threats.
Several high-profile departures and resignations have amplified concerns. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a top vaccine official who resigned in August, described the agency as operating like a “zombie” and said early cuts left patchy gaps across programs. He and others say more recent reductions signal a shift toward a much smaller CDC focused mainly on infectious-disease response, limited data functions and labs.
Dr. Debra Houry, the last career scientist serving at the agency’s highest levels until she left in August, co-authored an opinion in The Lancet with Daskalakis saying the CDC is in critical condition. Houry has warned that leadership changes have removed essential scientific experience and weakened coordination with state and local health departments, making it harder to set and oversee priorities.
HHS has appointed Dr. Ralph Abraham, the former Louisiana surgeon general, as a new second-in-command at the CDC. Some public-health officials have raised concerns about Abraham’s record, including decisions while in state office to limit vaccine promotion by public health authorities. Observers also note that several recent policy directions resemble recommendations from Project 2025, a conservative blueprint associated with The Heritage Foundation.
Critics point not only to staff losses but to moves such as disbanding the CDC’s ethics board and public statements they say contradict established scientific consensus on vaccines, autism and measles. They warn that the combination of shrinking capacity, eroded expertise and contested public messaging threatens the agency’s credibility and its ability to protect the nation from future health crises.
Reporting by Pien Huang, NPR News.