CDC is not fit for purpose, has lost the public's trust and needs a complete ... trends now
Public health leaders call for an agency-wide overhaul of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a new scathing indictment of how it operates.
A 30-page report unveiled by the Center for Strategic & International Studies' (CSIS) calls for CDC to hire and retain higher-quality staff, get information out faster and rebuild public trust in the agency after a rough pandemic period.
The embattled agency has faced a rocky few years marred by repeated troubles during the Covid pandemic. It has widely been criticized for poor or confusing guidance.
Another report published last year found the leading public health agency was too slow in its response to the virus in early 2020.
A new report by CSIS is calling for a full rebuilding of the CDC so it is better prepared to handle future public health outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic (file photo)
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in August the agency would be reorganized to focus on prioritizing public health needs and on curbing outbreaks, and to put less emphasis on publication of scientific papers about rare diseases (file photo)
In its report, titled 'Building the CDC the Country Needs', CSIS says agency leaders and the federal government need to work together to rebuild from the ground up.
'The big picture here is, we all see the need for a reset of the agency,' Julie Gerberding, who served at the CDC's director from 2002 to 2009 and now a CSIS member, told CNN.
'Some of the reset has to be structural, some of it needs to be activity that only Congress can really manage and that has to do with how the budget is structured, the size and scope of the budget and the flexibilities or lack thereof.'
She calls for modernization of the agency, improving data systems to both present information to the public better- and make more accurate projections.
The agency has a budget of $12billion, and employs 11,000 people. While a large portion is based in Atlanta, the CDC has a presence across
