WRespiratory disease season is in full swing The bird flu outbreak is evolving rapidlyThe new Trump administration ordered federal health agencies to obtain White House approval before communicating with the public.
“As the new administration considers its plan to manage federal policy and public communications operations, it is important that the President’s appointees and designees have the opportunity to review and approve any regulations, guidance documents, and other documents and public communications (including social media),” through February 1, As stated in a January 21 memo sent by Department of Health and Human Services officials and reviewed by TIME.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are located within HHS. These agencies regularly publish reports, research, and guidance that shape the public response to both chronic and acute health threats, from tobacco to infectious diseases and food-borne diseases.
“The CDC is the health warning system in the United States,” says Caitlin Gitellina, an epidemiologist who was a communications adviser to the CDC but was not speaking on behalf of the agency. Any policy that slows down this alert system could make the CDC’s work “incredibly chaotic,” she says.
Behind the scenes, employees at federal health agencies are scrambling to understand what the directive means for their work, says a person with direct knowledge of the discussions, who asked to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of the situation. “They gain clarity in real time,” they say.
The directive does not constitute a complete freeze on public communications, as the January 21 memo suggests, but requires pre-publication review of documents, press releases, website updates, social media posts, and other public communications. Such a policy is not entirely unprecedented. In 2017, she assumed the first Trump administration He issued a similar communications pause To agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the Interior. The Trump and Biden White Houses examined communications related to Covid-19 at different stages of the pandemic.
Mitch Zeller, who was director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products from 2013 to 2022, says it is “not unusual” for the next administration to issue a temporary moratorium on publications. “They want to speed up things that might be revealed before they all get their ID cards,” Zeller says.
He says it is unusual – and more troubling – for the White House to ask to review scientific documents. During his tenure with the FDA, White House communications staff were “never involved” in agency announcements unless it was “a very high-profile, once-in-a-decade announcement,” Zeller says.
The Department of Health and Human Services has its own “difficult” system for getting materials approved, Zeller says. Adding an extra layer of review could create a “bottleneck” in agency communications, which is potentially time-sensitive, he says. Indeed, this policy is said to have delayed CDC reporting on bird flu. According to Washington mail. (The memo reviewed by TIME notes that agency staff can notify HHS executives if they believe a document or communication should be exempt from the policy for reasons including “impact on[ing] Important health, safety, environmental, financial, or national security functions of management.
Moreover, “I don’t trust the next administration on issues like this,” says Zeller, who worked at the FDA during Trump’s first administration. “They came with an anti-regulation and anti-science agenda.”
Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who was appointed by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has repeatedly said he would lead sweeping changes within federal health agencies if confirmed. (Kennedy’s confirmation hearing is unlikely to be held before February, Bloomberg Reports.) These changes will likely include removing “Entire departments“At the US Food and Drug Administration, which limits the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do so Create and disseminate vaccination guidelinesand Redirecting research funding at the National Institutes of Health To topics related to preventive, alternative and holistic health.
A day before the communications memorandum was circulated, Trump also signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, a move As experts say It makes the United States more vulnerable to public health threats. The White House office responsible for pandemic preparedness is It is also expected to shrink significantly Under the Trump administration.
Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, sees the communications directives, although short-lived, as “another assault on American health.”
“The White House has no expertise in science, health and medicine,” Gostin says. “Why would I want to know what they think more than I would want to know what a top public health scientist thinks?”
HHS representatives did not respond to TIME’s requests for comment before press time. However, according to the memo, “the President’s appointees intend to expeditiously review documents and communications and return to a more regular process as soon as possible.”
