The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention works to protect the U.S. from health threats by researching a range of pathogens, collecting data on diseases, promoting environmental and occupational health, enacting programs to combat diseases, and more. Recent changes in CDC funding and messaging — especially during a time of measles and avian influenza outbreaks — will impact public health in communities across the country.

On March 6, public health officials participated in a SciLine media briefing about CDC funding.

The panel included: Dr. Ann Keller, professor of health politics at UC Berkeley School of Public Health; Dr. Beth Resnick of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and, Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, of the Brown University School of Public Health.

Health officials face a lot of challenges when dealing with disease outbreaks, Keller explained.

The CDC wasn’t writing its own guidance during the first Trump administration, she said. “Political appointees were writing things that were published as if they were coming out of the CDC.”

Under the Biden administration, the administration let the CDC operate independently, she said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the recommendations were controversial. The

“A number of independent health organizations picked up the CDC’s guidance,” she said. “The guidance weathered expert criticism and became the professional standard.

“It is really important for the public to understand that learning is a process, and that learning might be messy,” said Keller. “The norm for science is that scientists challenge each other. The scientific community is supposed to be skeptical,” she explained.

The science that withstands criticism should be better. “With political actors getting involved, this can be difficult,” Keller added.

“In our own lives you have a support system,” said Resnick. “The CDC is basically our support system for public health.”

In a health emergency, the CDC will send some of their personnel to a state or locality to help provide response.

“Even before the pandemic, state and local public health resources were already depleted,” she said. “They were already underfunded.

“It’s really critical to help rebuild state and local health departments,” Resnick continued. “Lack of workforce capacity matters.”

“Much of what we do in public health is prevention,” she said. “If you take that away, we would have increased disease.”

The Global Health Security Index measures the capacity of 195 countries to address health concerns that spread across borders, said Nuzzo.

On paper the US has fewer risks than other countries, and has more resources than other countries, she continued. “But no country was fully prepared.”

During the covid pandemic, the U.S. was struggling, she explained. “In a lot of instances, we chose not to use resources that we had.”

During the covid pandemic the United States experienced about 8 times as many deaths as other highly prepared countries, she said. “We just did not make use of all the resources we had.”

The inability to rapidly establish testing meant the U.S. had some struggles other countries didn’t, she said.

“We have a lot of built in social vulnerabilities that make it hard for people to protect themselves,” Nuzzo continued. “Where we are today in the US is a lot worse than where we were in 2019. We are seeing a systematic erosion of capabilities.”

The single most important thing for preparedness is an educated and experienced public workforce, Nuzzo added.

Nuzzo said health officials are concerned about the ongoing measles outbreak.

“This year we have had our first tragic death due to measles in a decade,” she said. “We are more vulnerable to measles than we were in 2019.”

She said health officials are also worried about H5N1 (avian influenza). They are worried about the farmworkers who are being exposed to the virus, and worried about the potential for that virus to mutate.

SciLine is a free service for journalists and scientists based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society. Editorially independent, nonpartisan, and funded by philanthropies, SciLine has the singular mission of enhancing the amount and quality of scientific evidence in news stories