The threat to public health is on rise under the current administration

Public health policies are no longer shaped by experts. Americans can no longer trust government bodies for health advice.

By Collin France

When COVID-19 swept across the globe, Americans turned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for guidance. But after recent political upheaval, staff dismissals, and deep budget cuts, the CDC is facing numerous challenges, and the public health of Americans is at risk.

Decisions which should be made by health experts for the public health of America are instead being made by politicians for the advancement of political agendas and personal values. It is urgent that our nation restores scientific independence and protects its public health agencies from political overstep. Government agencies must include experts in decision making so that American’s can trust that they are receiving accurate advice and the best care possible.

In recent months, public health institutions such as the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have taken multiple blows under the political oversight imposed by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Experts from the nation’s top medical organizations including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America are no longer allowed to be involved in establishing vaccination recommendations, according to an article published on August 4^th in AP News by Mike Stobbe.

An expert epidemiologist and former member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), who asked to remain anonymous, is among these experts who no longer has a say in establishing vaccine recommendations. The former ACIP member noted that the dismissal of experts from work groups—which extensively review research and shape recommendations for the public—has made doctors question whether federal data can be trusted.

“Physicians and healthcare providers are very concerned right now about whether the data they’re getting from the CDC is correct,” said the former ACIP member.

Physicians rely on accurate data and peer reviewed research to optimize treatments for sick patients. Without accurate data, it can be difficult to ensure that patients receive the most effective care.

Committees like ACIP served as the CDC’s scientific navigation system. Their members advised the agency on which vaccines to recommend, when to update vaccination schedules, and how to respond to emerging outbreaks. On June 9, 2025, the ACIP was disbanded. Its members were dismissed and replaced. The result has been confusion and inconsistency in the nation’s vaccine policy.

The former ACIP member noted that much of the CDC’s institutional knowledge about diseases and epidemiology has disappeared since the reconstitution of work groups and advisory boards. Many of the new members have little to no medical background, and some misunderstand the basics of virology and epidemiology.

For examples, there was dangerous misinformation about adjuvants, a class of substances added to vaccines to enhance immune responses and improve efficacy of a vaccine, in a recent meeting.  “One of the replacement members started talking about adjuvants in live viral vaccines, but we can’t use adjuvants in live viral vaccines,” said former ACIP member.   

Misinformation can ripple outward quickly, amplified by social media and partisan news outlets. A single inaccurate statement from an unqualified source can undermine months of public-health outreach, leading parents to delay childhood vaccinations or cause older, more susceptible people to reject boosters during outbreaks. Once public confidence falters, it can take years to rebuild.

Dr. David Aronoff, a public health expert and infectious disease specialist whose university’s funding is under scrutiny by the Trump administration, compared the replacement of expert advisors to asking a chef to repair a car. “If my car breaks down, I’m not going to take it to my favorite restaurant chef,” he said. “I am going to take it to an automotive expert who understands my car. That is the kind of expertise we need in public health,”

As research funding has aligned more with the political agendas of Health Secretary, Kennedy, research carried out by scientists has been limited in certain areas. According to the former ACIP member, the CDC’s COVID-19 division received no budget, halting its studies and surveillance operations.

Surveillance or tracking the emergence of new diseases and how and where diseases spread is one of the CDC’s most vital roles. The CDC conducts surveillance not just for infectious diseases but for all the diverse ways people can become unhealthy, whether it is through traumas, car accidents, or noncommunicable diseases. When funding dries up, surveillance programs vanish, leaving the country blind to early warning signs.

The benefits of sustained investment in research are clear. Vaccines have eradicated or reduced diseases that once devastated communities. “Polio is a prime example,” the former ACIP member said. “It ran rampant through communities, and the vaccine eliminated it.”

Aronoff explained why these successes matter far beyond any single disease. “Even though illness is going to happen, we do not have to let it,” he said. “The way we prevent illness is by understanding it and deploying resources aggressively and appropriately to make illnesses go away.”

Research not only protects people from disease but fuels discovery itself. A CDC report published August 8^th, 2024, shows that routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths.

In a press release published in June 2025, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that “a clean sweep (of ACIP members) was necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.”

Supporters of Kennedy’s decision argue that previous CDC and ACIP members had grown too secluded from public opinion, operating within a manner that ignored vaccine skepticism from the public and parental concerns. They claim that bringing in new voices—even ones from outside medicine—could make vaccine policy align more with the concerns of the Americans.

Ultimately, advocates of this view believe that science should not exist in isolation from democracy, and that health recommendations must consider ethical, cultural, and social factors, not just statistics. Kennedy described the restructuring as an effort to “restore trust in public health institutions by ensuring that diverse perspectives are represented.” From this perspective, Kennedy’s overhaul was not an attack on science but an attempt to rebuild a system which had failed to serve the interest of all Americans.

However, the decision to reconstitute expert boards like ACIP destroyed more trust than it built. Trust is a continuous process. “It is built a drop at a time, but is destroyed in buckets,” said Aronoff.

Scientific trust is built and sustained through humility, open communication, and willingness to admit when scientists are wrong and revise conclusions when new evidence emerges. By demonstrating scientific integrity through open communication with the public and saving lives by advising the public based on contemporary research findings, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) worked tirelessly for decades to build this trust. The dismissal of the entire ACIP and other public health experts within the CDC and NIH by Kennedy has undermined the trust that has taken decades to build, weakening the nation’s confidence in health institutions and jeopardizing the foundation of evidence-based medicine.

The United States built its public health system on expertise, transparency, and the willingness to follow data wherever it leads. When that system is bent to serve politics, it fails to serve the people. Public health is not a partisan issue; it is science. It is the reason vaccines wiped out Polio, why Americans on average live longer than their grandparents did, and why the nation was able to construct COVID-19 vaccines in record time to combat the pandemic.

In medicine, there are constant mysteries – why patients fall ill, why treatments fail – and continuous learning through research is the only way to solve these mysteries.

As Aronoff put it, “Every dollar we put into research gets paid back many fold over in public health benefits.” But these returns depend on the nation’s willingness to protect science from political interference.

The United States needs both vaccine and epidemiology research to identify illnesses and diseases that threaten the health of America and discover ways which Americans may protect themselves and their loved ones from these continuously evolving maladies. Furthermore, the United States needs trusted experts to lead federal health institutions and their corresponding advisory boards and committees so that they can be confident that Americans are receive the most accurate advice and best healthcare possible.

The concern physicians are experiencing should be a shared concern, from policymakers to parents, deciding whether to vaccinate their children. If the public can no longer trust the leaders guiding its health decisions, the consequences will reach far beyond any single administration.