At Issue: The Dismantling of Public Health Institutions Featuring Experts Dr. John Brooks and Dr. Anne Schuchat

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Dr. John Brooks is the former Chief Medical Officer at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of HIV Prevention. Dr. Anne Schuchat was Principal Deputy Director at the CDC from 2015-2021 and served twice as acting director. The discussion will be moderated by Nicholas Florko who writes about health issues for The Atlantic

Hill Center launched its new public affairs discussion series, At Issue in April. The series will examine the many critical issues we are faced with today. The Trump administration has targeted the American scientific enterprise. It has slashed or frozen budgets at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and The National Science Foundation, among other agencies. It has fired or defunded thousands of researchers. As New York Times science editor Alan Burdick writes, “The chaos is confusing: Isn’t science a force for good? Hasn’t it contained disease?” (suddenly) “facts are elite, facts are fungible, facts are false. And once nothing is true, anything can be true.”

Dr. Brooks and Dr. Schuchat will examine the short and long term consequences of gutting America’s public health institutions.

Recently, Dr. Schuchat delivered an opening statement before a subcommittee of Congress  in which she explained how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) protects Americans’ health.

Problems don’t go away or magically disappear when we stop tracking them. They just are much harder to deal with once they become so big, that we can’t ignore them anymore.

We are all at greater risk from the seemingly indiscriminate cuts to the nation’s core public health capacity and the effects go beyond the reduction in forces and budget cuts at CDC. The restrictions on CDC experts’ communication, at a time of excruciatingly confusing messaging from top HHS leadership, is making it harder to control measles outbreaks and threatening a resurgence of other vaccine-preventable diseases.

And Dr. Brooks notes:

The chaotic cuts we’re seeing to U.S. public health might yield short-term savings but will substantially increase preventable injury, illness and suffering with a much greater long-term cost.

Dr. John T. Brooks is an internist and clinical infectious diseases expert who worked for 26 years as a medical officer and epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control. Prior to his retirement in 2024, he served for ten years as the Chief Medical Officer to the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention. Dr. Brooks also led CDC teams during emergency responses to anthrax, SARS, influenza, HIV, Ebola, Zika, and mpox, and served for two years as the chief medical officer for CDC’s COVID-19 Response. Dr. Brooks has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and participates in the formation of multiple national infectious disease guidelines. Dr. Brooks came to CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1998 after completing medical school, a residency in internal medicine, and a fellowship in infectious diseases through Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Anne Schuchat is an internist and epidemiologist who was Principal Deputy Director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2015-2021 and served twice as acting director. She was the first Director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) from 2005-2015. Schuchat joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1988 and played key roles in numerous emergency responses including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 outbreak of vaping associated lung injuries, the West Africa Ebola epidemic, 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and the 2003 SARS outbreak where she deployed to Beijing. In the 1990’s, Dr. Schuchat spearheaded US guidelines which have prevented more than 100,000 life-threatening group B streptococcal infections in newborns so far. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and received the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Schuchat retired as a Rear Admiral (upper half) in the Commissioned Corps of the USPHS in 2018 and from CDC in 2021

Nicholas Florko is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He covers how business and policy affect our well-being, with a focus on products that make us sick. Before joining The Atlantic in 2024, Nick was a reporter for STAT covering the commercial determinants of health and the FDA. In 2023, Nick was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and the Livingston Award for his reporting on hepatitis C in prisons.