The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States will undergo a sweeping reorganization with a series of changes — that are referred to as optimizations — in order to position the federal agency to better support the future of public health; and are intended to ensure that the science and programs of the agency reach the public in a timely and effective manner both during a pandemic and during normal operations.
Reorganization Ahead For Centers For Disease Control and Prevention of the United States
Rochelle P. Walensky — who is the current director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry — outlined the changes in the organization of the agency in this document called CDC Moving Forward, which are designed to not only change how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention operates but also its culture, orienting it toward timely action – ensuring that the science of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reaches the public in an understandable, accessible, and implementable manner as quickly as possible.
As the first of those next steps to move the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forward, the agency will immediately:
- Appoint a seasoned executive to lead a team that will help implement the vision.
- Elevate the Science and Laboratory Sciences to report to the director in order to improve accountability for delivering timely information.
- Start a process to make structural changes to incentivize public health action, implementation, and impact at all levels of the organization.
- Create a new executive council — reporting to the director — that will determine agency. priorities, track progress, and align budget decisions, with a bias toward public health impact
- Create a one-stop shop for external partners to navigate the agency.
- Create a new equity office that will promote this focus across all of the work Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does, as well as how the agency operates; a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that reflects the diversity of America will be better positioned to respond to outbreaks — from science to communications.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges that a significant amount of work is ahead in order to better position itself for success, as it:
- First must institutionalize new internal systems, processes, and policies to improve its accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness within the agency itself and with its customers, at all levels of the organization.
- Second, must take its concrete lessons learned from the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic to improve how the agency delivers its science, guidance, and programs to the people of the United States.
- Next, will reorganize to facilitate a more cohesive and customer centric structure.
- Finally, will finalize a list of programs, flexibilities, and authorities that will enable employees at the agency to do their work faster and more effectively in the future.
Final Boarding Call
In terms of the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic, these changes — which were announced within a week of the official announcement of Anthony Fauci stepping down from his roles in the federal government in December of 2022 — are too little, too late, in my opinion.
I lost a lot of trust and respect for:
- The World Health Organization
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States — especially when the federal agency could not even get its own advice straight during the pandemic
- Anthony Fauci and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health of the United States
- The mainstream media in general, which did whatever they could to sensationalize a serious global health issue for their own gain rather than question and investigate information from authorities in order to properly inform the public they serve with actual facts
- Some of my fellow “bloggers”, whose articles I refuse to read because I do not trust them or the supposed information they provide after they steadfastly and blindly jumped aboard the mainstream media bandwagon — and needlessly and relentlessly chastised others in the process
- The so-called “leaders” of many governments around the world who did not put the people they serve first
…as I believe they mishandled — no, bungled — what should have been a reasonable, logical, and cohesive response to the pandemic. They should all be held accountable for their actions in what seemed like collusion to perpetuate propaganda and virtue signaling in advancing a faulty agenda that caused far more damage than good, which is taking years to fix and correct — but, of course, that will never happen.
As one example, travel was — and still is, in many ways — one of the industries which was most affected by the seemingly inept decisions of those entities. This means that you and I were adversely affected…
…and that is only pertaining to economics, which includes people who legally accepted money from the Paycheck Protection Program despite not being adversely affected economically. I will not even begin to discuss how many people ironically died, were injured, partially or completely lost their livelihoods, or were psychologically adversely affected by the blanket of bad decisions of the aforementioned entities — all in the name of taking advantage of fear mongering tactics for profit, power, and advancing political agendas — during the height of the pandemic. Some healthy people are still to this day very afraid to venture out into the world and resume a normal life because they might contract some variant of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.
Although the World Health Organization had supposedly began undergoing a “transformation” back in 2017, I am not going to hold my breath and wait for an official announcement from the entity as to how they will do better when — not if — the next pandemic surfaces…
…and do not even get me started about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I knew a few people who worked at the agency and had nothing but negative things to say about it. To me, that agency is a classic example of a bloated federal government which is simply too big and cumbersome and needs to be pared — probably by at least one third of its current size.
However, I will give a modicum of credit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for at least attempting to pivot towards a better future. Time will tell if this effort pays off for the agency, which has to prove that it can be trusted once again. I wish the agency luck. It is going to need every bit of it for the future.
Anyone who has been directing other people to “follow the science” should know that the first rule of science is to question it. I not only still stand behind the articles which I have written for approximately 2.5 years throughout the pandemic; but now that we have some hindsight, I vehemently adhere to the ideas and principles about which I wrote more than ever.
For a complete list of those articles — which include links to them — please refer to this article which was published exactly one year after the pandemic was official declared by the World Health Organization; and this article — which was published exactly one year after that — discusses what we might have learned and not learned over those two years.
Photograph ©2021 by Brian Cohen.
