Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Wednesday voiced deep criticism of her agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it has not responded quickly enough. and needs to be overhauled.
During a meeting with senior staff, Dr. Walensky outlined a plan to reorganize the agency’s structure to prioritize public health needs and efforts to limit the continued outbreak. , and less emphasis on publishing scientific articles on rare diseases.
The steps announced Wednesday grow out of an external review that Dr Walensky requested in April, after months of harsh criticism of the CDC’s response to the pandemic. Its public messages about cloaking and other mitigations are sometimes so confusing or so abrupt that they seem more like internal drafts than well-thought out statements. .
According to a briefing document provided by the agency, the public guidance has been “confusing and overwhelming”.
The leaders of the agency’s Covid team rotated after just a few months, leaving other senior federal health officials uncertain about who was in charge. And key data is sometimes released confusingly too late to inform federal decisions, including some groundbreaking infection data that could affect recommendations about whether to make a decision. whether a booster injection should be allowed.
“For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our critical moment, our performance has been shockingly short of expectations,” said Dr. Walensky said in a startling acknowledgment of the agency’s failures. “My goal is a new, public health, action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness.”
Her plan, also described in a video for the company’s more than 11,000 employees, is brief in specifics. But it was welcomed by at least some of the agency’s two dozen senior employees, as well as outside public health experts.
The agency has been criticized for years for being too one-sided and academic. Many of their experts are used to conducting narrowly focused studies that undergo lengthy assessments, and they are uncomfortable with the kind of urgent action needed to tackle the coronavirus, and now the epidemic. Smallpox in monkeys.
In an interview on Monday, Dr Walensky said she has repeatedly urged employees to rotate Covid-19 data as quickly as possible. “Some data is messy and some data takes time,” she said. “I really tried to push the data out when we had it.”
The external review that Dr. Walensky ordered was led by James Macrae, who served in senior positions at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the CDC. He interviewed about 120 people inside and outside the agency. His report was not released; An official said it was being completed.
The changes Dr. Walensky described include the appointment of a former Obama administration health official, Mary K. Wakefield, to lead the CDC’s shift toward a stronger public health focus. The two science divisions will now report directly to Dr. Walensky’s office, and the agency will cut review times for needed research. The agency is also changing its promotion system to reward efforts that make an impact on public health and is less based on published scientific articles.
The brief says that Dr. Walensky wants staff to “produce data for action” rather than “data for publication”.
Importantly, the agency will strengthen its public health emergency response team and require these officials to hold their positions for at least six months, aides said. Previously, they were allowed to rotate after just a few months, a system that senior federal officials say has caused confusion and took up valuable time during the pandemic.
A new executive team will be formed to set priorities and make decisions on how to spend the agency’s roughly $12 billion annual budget, “with a bias toward public health impact,” press conference documents said.
And the CDC is working to improve its public message. Dr. Walensky, who rocked the agency’s communications department, wanted to ensure that the guidance was issued in “simple, easy-to-understand language,” the document said.
