New CDC chief faces mammoth challenge
Public trust depleted as pandemic rages on
NEWYORK— As the coronavirus swept across the globe last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sank into the shadows, undermined by some of its own mistakes and stifled by an administration bent on downplaying the nation’s suffering.
Now a new CDC director is arriving to a mammoth task: reasserting the agency while the pandemic is in its deadliest phase yet and the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign is wracked by confusion and delays.
“I don’t know if the CDC is broken or just temporarily injured,” but something must be done to bring it back to health, said Timothy Westmoreland, a Georgetown University law professor focused on public health.
The task falls to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who was sworn in Wednesday. She takes the helm at a time when the U.S. virus death toll has eclipsed 400,000 and continues to accelerate.
While the agency has retained some of its top scientific talent, public health experts say, it has a long list of needs, including new protection from political influence, a comprehensive review of its missteps during the pandemic and more money to beef up basic functions such as disease tracking and genetic analysis.
Walensky has said one of her top priorities will be to improve the CDC’S communications with the public to rebuild trust. Inside the agency, she wants to raise morale, in large part by restoring the primacy of science and setting politics aside.
The speed at which she is assuming the job is unusual. In the past, the position has generally been unfilled until a new secretary of health and human services is confirmed and that official names a CDC director. But this time, the Biden transition team named Walensky in advance, so she could take the agency’s reins even before her boss is in place.
Walensky, an HIV researcher, has not worked at the CDC or at a state or local health department. But she has emerged as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing certain aspects of the state and national response.
She acknowledged the weaknesses in her resume. “When people write about me as the selection for this position, they will say, ‘But she has no on-the-ground public health experience,’ ” she said in a podcast with the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The podcast’s host, Dr. Howard Bauchner, who is also editor of the journal, praised her effusively. “I can’t imagine the CDC and the country being luckier … mostly just because you can communicate, which is such an important task for the head of the CDC,” he said.
Walensky did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.
She will succeed Dr. Robert Redfield, 69, who came to the CDC with a similar resume as an outsider from academia.
The CDC “has been sidelined, has been maligned, has been a punching bag for many politicians in the outgoing administration. And that has had a detrimental effect on the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission,” said Dr. Richard Besser, a former CDC official who now heads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Some experts suggest that an administration that values science and increases funding could restore the CDC to pre-eminence. Biden has pledged to put scientists out front on COVID-19 matters, Besser noted.
“That’s something I think will be fixed on day one,” he said.