FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Doctors for America
PO Box: 21161
2300 18th St NW Lbby
Washington, DC 20009-9996
April 3, 2025
Doctors for America Denounces Mass Layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Doctors for America (DFA) strongly denounces the mass layoffs across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies and the extreme detriment that these layoffs will have on public health. As we learn about the specific divisions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is evident that there is no aspect of public health, and no American, who will remain unaffected by this rash and senseless gutting of our national public health infrastructure. We call on Congress to denounce these firings and protect the lives of all Americans by restoring our public health workforce.
The CDC is the nation’s leading scientific organization that protects public health by detecting emerging health threats, addressing causes of death and disability, disease prevention, promotion of safe health behaviors, and training a robust public health workforce. The CDC’s critical work extends beyond infectious diseases and outbreak response to promote health and safety and prevent chronic disease. The CDC supports state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments through collaborative infrastructure and partnerships to strengthen the public health workforce and data analysis, and ensure US public health systems are prepared to recognize and respond to health needs.
Employees were laid off across agency divisions, ¹halting critical work in a staggering range of areas, such as: preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, improving vaccine access among underserved communities, studying how to alleviate chronic diseases such as asthma, and addressing the health impact of environmental erexposures such as lead poisoning, radiation, extreme heat, and wildfires. Top experts have not been spared, including Dr. Jonathan Mermin, the Director of the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, who was placed on administrative leave, undercutting HIV prevention efforts for Ending the HIV Epidemic, an initiative launched by the first Trump Administration to reduce new HIV infections by 90% by 2030.
The immediate impact of these cuts are deeply concerning given the active public health threats in the US, including ongoing measles outbreaks across 20 states with 483 cases and 2 deaths to date, a tuberculosis outbreak with 68 cases of active disease in Kansas, the worst influenza season in 15 years which caused 25,000 deaths and over half a million hospitalizations, ongoing monitoring of a H5 bird flu outbreak with pandemic potential, and a potential resurgence of murine typhus. Work at the CDC is central to preventing and addressing chronic infectious diseases, including HIV, as well as hepatitis B and C, which are leading causes of liver diseases and liver cancer. The workplace and environmental safety expertise includes infectious disease exposure, such as H5 avian influenza, and environmental and exposure hazards, such as those faced by firefighters and coal miners. Their work is also essential to addressing maternal morbidity and mortality and protecting the safety of children. Simultaneously, layoffs at the Center for Mental Health Services at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in addition to the revocation of $11.4 billion in funding for mental and addiction healthcare, will reverse progress to address both the opioid epidemic and the mental health crisis in America.
The destruction of our public health infrastructure threatens the health and safety of all Americans. These cuts will compound the global disease threats to national security and American health that we are facing with the dismantling of USAID, PEPFAR, and withdrawal from the WHO, ultimately leading to unnecessary and preventable deaths abroad and within US borders. The consequences of decimating the US scientific, global, and public health infrastructure will be felt for decades. Attempts to reconstruct a trained workforce will take years; countless lives will be lost in the interim. The downstream impacts on state and local public health, including loss of funding and workforce, will only ensure that we are unprepared to face ongoing and future health threats and that no American or community is safe.
¹Included among CDC Divisions impacted by layoffs: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, Global Health Center, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, National Center for Environmental Health, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
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About Doctors for America:
Doctors for America mobilizes doctors and medical students to be leaders in putting patients over politics to improve the health of our patients, communities, and nation. DFA is an organization of over 27,000 physician and medical student advocates in all 50 states, representing all areas of specialization. DFA teaches physicians and medical students advocacy skills and does advocacy at a state and federal level. Our impact areas focus on access to affordable care, community health and prevention, and health justice and equity. DFA focuses solely on what is best for our patients, not on the business side of medicine, and does not accept any funding from pharmaceutical or medical device companies, insurance companies or for-profit healthcare companies; which uniquely positions DFA as the organization that puts patients over politics and patients over profits. Find out more at doctorsforamerica.org and on Twitter drsforamerica or Bluesky drsforamerica.bsky.social.