CDC In Turmoil as 5 High-Level Officials Leave the Public Health Agency

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was rocked by five high-level departures on Tuesday in the latest turmoil for the nation’s top public health agency.

The departures were announced at a meeting of agency senior leaders. The Atlanta-based CDC has two dozen centers and offices. The heads of five of them are stepping down, and that follows three other departures in recent weeks. This means close to a third of the agency’s top management is leaving or left recently.

The departures — described as retirements — were not announced publicly. The Associated Press confirmed the news with two CDC officials who were not authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The announcements come a day after the White House announced it is nominating Susan Monarez to be CDC director. But it’s not clear how much, if any, influence that had on the leaders’ decision to leave. The Trump administration earlier this month withdrew its nomination of former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon just before a Senate hearing.

CDC employees — including the organization’s leaders — have been bracing themselves for moves by the Trump administration to lay off staff and possibly dramatically reorganize the agency. White House officials are reviewing a work force reduction proposal for CDC and other federal health agencies that was submitted earlier this month. Its contents have not been disclosed.

“The challenges for these individuals to do their jobs on a daily basis must be enormous,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher who studies government health agencies. “The future of CDC is under threat, by any measure. It’s understandable why individuals may decide to move on rather than see the agency diminished in its works, and its resources, and its ability to do its job.”

But losing a number of experienced leaders is clearly an additional blow to an already besieged agency, Schwartz added.

The latest departures include:

Leslie Ann Dauphin, who oversees the Public Health Infrastructure Center and its more than 500 employees. That center coordinates CDC funding, strategy, and technical assistance to state, local and territorial health departments.

Dr. Karen Remley, who heads the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. At the beginning of the year, the center had more than 220 full-time employees.

Sam Posner, who heads the Office of Science. More than 100 CDC employees work on research and science policy, and publish the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Debra Lubar, who runs the 65-person Office of Policy, Performance and Evaluation.

Leandris Liburd, head of the Office of Health Equity, with about 40 employees. Liburd took the role in 2020, as part of an effort to address the COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate death toll on Black, Hispanic and Native Americans.

Adding to that: Kevin Griffis, head of CDC’s office of communications, left last week. Robin Bailey, the agency’s chief operating officer, left late last month. So did Dr. Nirav Shah, a former CDC principal deputy director who last year was the agency’s primary voice about an evolving bird flu epidemic in animals that has also sickened at least 70 people in the U.S.

The CDC, with a core budget of more than $9 billion, is charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats. At the beginning of this year, it had more than 13,000 employees, and nearly 13,000 other contract workers.

At least 550 probationary employees were laid off in February, although those layoffs were challenged in lawsuits and two federal judges ordered that the employees be reinstated. According to some of the laid off employees, that hasn’t happened yet, although the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has – following court orders – extended their administrative leave pay.

“It would be foolhardy to predict what the CDC will look like” in a few months, let alone a couple of years, Schwartz said. But it’s understandable why senior leaders “might not want to sign up for that,” he added.