PUBLIC HEALTHKennedy Hearing Deepens Crisis Over Dismantling of CDC Leadership - Health Scholar Explains Why the Agency’s Ability to Protect Public Health Is Compromised
CDC, long considered the nation’s –if not the world’s –premier public health organization, is unraveling. The reason: HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s effort to emasculate the agency, undermine its scientific foundations, replace scientists in the agency with unqualified anti-vaxxers, do away with its evidence-to-recommendations framework, and promote skepticism, if not rejection, of science and scientific methods. Public health professionals are now warning the public that vaccine recommendations coming from the CDC may not be trustworthy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long considered the nation’s – if not the world’s – premier public health organization, is mired in a crisis that not only threatens Americans’ health but also its very survival as a leading public health institution.
The degree of this crisis was on full display during Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Sept. 4, 2025, testimony before the U.S. Senate.
In the hearing, Kennedy openly criticized CDC professionals’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying “the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”
Kennedy’s hearing came on the heels of a contentious week in which Kennedy fired the CDC’s director, Susan Monarez, spurring 12 members of the Senate Finance Committee – including 11 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders – to call on Kennedy to resign from his position.
At least four top CDC leaders resigned following Monarez’s ouster, citing pressure from Kennedy to depart from recommendations based on sound scientific evidence.
I am a teaching professor and public health professional. Like many of my colleagues, the disruption happening at the CDC in recent months has left me scrambling to find alternate credible sources of health information and feeling deeply concerned for the future of public health.
The CDC’s Unraveling
These leadership shakeups come on the heels of months of targeted actions aimed at unraveling the CDC’s structure, function and leadership as it has existed for decades.
The turmoil began almost as soon as President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, when his administration enacted sweeping cuts to the CDC’s workforce that health experts broadly agree jeopardized its ability to respond to emerging health threats.
Trump used executive orders to limit CDC employees’ communication with the public and other external agencies, like the World Health Organization.
Within weeks, he ordered as much as 10% of the overall workforce to be cut.
Soon after, Kennedy – who was newly appointed by Trump – began undoing long-standing CDC institutions, like the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing all 17 of its members in a move that was widely denounced by health experts.
Critics pointed to a lack of qualifications for the new committee members, with more than half never having published research on vaccinations and many having predetermined hostility toward vaccines.
