The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is once again searching for a new leader.
During the current Trump administration, the embattled agency tasked with protecting the nation's health has had a Senate-confirmed director for less than a month, and it has lost at least a quarter of its staff due to cuts and attrition.
How is morale, for those who remain? Better than it was last year, but still low, a dozen current and recently departed CDC officials tell NPR. The agency is struggling to fulfill key parts of its public health mission, as waves of cutbacks, uncertainty in the workforce and a leadership vacuum have taken a toll.
Staffers were heartened earlier this month, when a federal judge put a halt to a year of vaccine policy changes initiated by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the advisory committee he stacked with members opposed by many at CDC, for their lack of vaccine expertise and their history opposing certain vaccines.
And in January, Congress passed a budget that essentially restored the agency's funding to previous levels. Another improvement, staffers say, was when Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, took over in mid-February as acting director of the CDC and spoke up in favor of the measles vaccine.
Still, morale is much worse compared with December 2024, before DOGE took aim at the health agency's budgets and staffing, and before rounds of lurching job cuts and reinstatements left thousands of CDC workers in limbo or severed from their careers. "It's terrible. It's terrible every minute of every day, from the moment I wake up," says a senior official at CDC, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
On a longer timescale, morale is at an all-time low, "even lower than it was during COVID," when public health officials were fighting the pandemic while facing strong criticism, says Aryn Melton Backus, a health communications specialist at CDC who has been on administrative leave for over a year. She is speaking with NPR in her personal capacity.
A trying year for the public health agency
In the past year, the CDC has suffered major losses to its staff, programs and reputation. Its vaccine recommendations, once considered the world standard, are no longer accepted domestically by major U.S. medical organizations and around 30 states. And in August a gunman critical of COVID-19 vaccines fired more than 180 shots at CDC's headquarters in Atlanta, killing a police officer. Kennedy also upended the longstanding process by which science is vetted and used to develop public health policies, striking at the heart of the agency.
Kennedy's Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC, has defended the changes as necessary to help rebuild public trust that was lost during the pandemic. Polls show an overall reduction in trust in the CDC's vaccine information but greater trust in scientists at federal health agencies than their leadership since Kennedy became health secretary.
"The decline of public trust in federal health agencies started long before the Trump administration," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon wrote to NPR in an email, "That damage was caused by the incompetency of the Biden administration with inconsistent guidance and a culture that told Americans to 'trust the experts' without showing the evidence. Secretary Kennedy's mandate is to restore transparency, scientific rigor, and accountability so trust can be earned back. Selective polling snapshots does not change the reality that trust was already broken and rebuilding it requires long-term reform." Nixon says the CDC's current staffing aligns with pre-pandemic levels.
But many in public health say Kennedy's methods have caused drama and chaos, decoupled policy from scientific evidence, and undermined crucial programs that monitor and promote better health for Americans.
Despite recent improvements, current and former CDC staff are still concerned about the agency's long-term prospects. "Having the pendulum swing back is reassuring, but I don't think we're out of the woods yet," says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who resigned in August 2025 after Kennedy fired director Susan Monarez. "Maybe [the Trump Administration] didn't succeed in doing a lot of cuts and damage this year … but I think there's a long game for the destruction," he says.
Thousands of public health scientists remain at the agency and continue to run surveillance systems for reportable diseases and to support states in opioid overdose prevention, but the CDC's public-facing voice has largely been silenced, says Backus, who co-founded the National Public Health Coalition, a group of fired CDC employees who track the impacts of the Trump administration's changes to the agency.
Health alerts to medical providers have slowed to a drip. Social media accounts to get information to the public have been shuttered or consolidated and many communications staff have been cut from the agency. The CDC's flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, described by employees as the "voice of CDC," publishes far fewer articles than it did before the Trump administration.
The administration has lowered the visibility of CDC, Daskalakis says, diminishing a key role of the agency. "They're just not delivering on part of their function, which is to inform the American population from a national perspective," he says.
A new acting director draws good reviews
Since the start of the Trump administration, the CDC has had a "permanent" director for less than a month. Susan Monarez was confirmed by the Senate last July, then fired in August. She later testified she was fired because she refused to give "blanket approval" in advance of future vaccine policy changes. "Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology," Monarez said.
Otherwise, it's been a parade of acting directors and senior political appointees. Monarez had served as acting director before her nomination for the role, followed by lawyer Matthew Buzzelli. Jim O'Neill, a deputy secretary at HHS and a technology investor, stepped into the role after Monarez was ousted and remained there until he left HHS in February. CDC staffers say O'Neill was scarce at agency headquarters and delegated most of his duties to Sam Beyda, a former DOGE staffer who graduated college in 2023.
The current acting director is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a former Stanford professor and health economist who has been leading the National Institutes of Health. "It's been a tumultuous year at the CDC, but it's a solid organization that just needs a little bit of leadership and love," Bhattacharya said on the podcast Why Should I Trust You?, about a week after he was named acting CDC director Feb. 18.
CDC employees remember that Bhattacharya was a vocal critic of the CDC and its COVID policies during the pandemic – but his leadership over the past month has drawn rave reviews.
"I've been really surprised — Dr. Bhattacharya has changed everything," says a current CDC official, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media on behalf of the agency. Bhattacharya has visited the Atlanta campus, sent emails commending the CDC staff and thanking them for their work, and extended telework accommodations in his first weeks on the job.
He's started to stabilize the leadership team, converting some center directors in acting positions to permanent roles, and has greenlit contracts and conference plans that had been on hold for months. This week, Bhattacharya is holding an all-staff meeting – the agency's first in over six months. "It just shows what they could have been doing but weren't," the official says.
After more than a year, a hiring freeze at CDC is starting to thaw: limited fellowship opportunities have been posted, and there's more lateral movement within the agency, CDC employees say.
Still, expectations are tempered. "It kind of feels like a situation with an emotionally abusive parent," the current CDC official says, "You want to believe they're on your side -- but there really is this sense that anything could happen." Trust between agency employees and the leadership at CDC and HHS has been lost, and "it's going to take a lot more" for employees to view the agency's leadership with less skepticism.
Bhattacharya's tenure is also limited by federal law. March 25 will mark 210 days since Monarez left the agency on Aug. 27 – the limit for how long someone can lead the agency as an acting director, according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.
According to the act, the Trump administration must nominate a candidate for director by that date. Bhattacharya could remain in charge as the nominee goes through the Senate confirmation process, and he's indicated to CDC staff that he expects to remain as acting director for several months.
Daskalakis likens some of the enthusiasm for Bhattacharya to "Stockholm syndrome." "Even the smallest glimmer of not-animosity is perceived as something that is friendly and inspiring," he says. "I'm uninspired by any of it because I think the damage has been done."
Bhattacharya's tenure at the National Institutes of Health, the other agency he's been running for longer, has been unpopular among many staff there. They have been unhappy about a variety of issues including the loss of staff, restrictions on grants, some guest speakers with fringe scientific views, and the many leadership positions occupied by staff in a temporary acting capacity — a problem Bhattacharya has pledged to solve at CDC.
Budget restored but implementation remains a challenge
It's far better to have the largely restored CDC budget that Congress passed earlier this year than one with the drastic proposed cuts, current and former public health officials at CDC say. But barriers continue to hinder their ability to do the work of public health, and they remain wary of the administration's long-term intentions for the agency.
"Just because the money comes, doesn't mean that there are going to be notices of funding or grant opportunities to get them out," says Daskalakis. Some fully funded programs at CDC have no remaining staff. Red states receive preferential treatment from the agency's politically appointed leadership, according to those with knowledge of the situation. Last month, the Office of Management and Budget attempted to cancel $600 million in CDC grants to states led by Democrats from the budget Trump had just signed.
A former CDC scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear jeopardizing future job prospects, says no significant tax dollars were saved in last year's cuts. Instead, a lot of money was wasted: Several hundred employees have spent the past year on paid administrative leave, according to data collected by the National Public Health Coalition. Allocated grant funding still went out to partners — as about 80% of CDC's budget historically does — but without technical support or accountability because of cuts to CDC's working staff.
The Trump administration may impede the further outflow of funds from CDC – then make the case that the funding should not be renewed, Daskalakis says. "If next year, when CDC had X billion dollars and spent [a fraction] of it, it's going to be a hard sell to people in Congress and appropriations to maintain those resources," he says, which could lead to large cuts to the CDC's budget in future funding cycles.
And the HHS secretary and president have been clear that they intend to pare down the agency, and reduce its influence on policy – so former officials say moves intended to stabilize the agency ring hollow.
"I am concerned this is window dressing," says Dr. Deb Houry, former chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at CDC, who resigned in August 2025. Houry says the initial accommodations Bhattacharya has made at the agency, and his public support for measles vaccines, belies the fact that the agency's leadership is still packed with around 20 or so political appointees, several with documented anti-vaccine views, who control external communications, contracts and spending down to the level of travel requests.
Houry points to recent public health threats caused by vaccine preventable diseases, on which Kennedy has not given the typical response of promoting vaccines. The past flu season, which the CDC classified as highly severe for children, killed more than a hundred kids. Measles continues to spread in the U.S., causing 14 new outbreaks in the U.S. in 2026 so far and sickening more than a thousand kids, most of whom were not vaccinated against measles. "The secretary has been silent," Houry says, "So I am concerned that this is for appearances, but nothing systemic is changing."
Trump administration officials have reportedly urged Kennedy, who founded a leading anti-vaccine advocacy group, to pivot away from his quest to eliminate vaccine recommendations ahead of November's midterm elections. A December report from Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio warned that "candidates who support eliminating long standing vaccine requirements will pay a price in the election," since routine childhood vaccines have strong bipartisan support. Reforming food policy is more popular with voters, polling shows.
Meanwhile at CDC, career scientists are fleeing programs and topic areas the administration has targeted. Many are quitting the agency, and more gaps are emerging within the ranks.
Former leaders warn that the loss of institutional knowledge, combined with halts to the incoming pipeline of public health workers, may lead to a long-term crisis. "Experts at the top make experts on the bottom," says Dr. Dan Jernigan, a former top CDC official, "The impact of the loss of staff may not be felt until there's a big emergency, and for routine activities, it may not be felt for several years."
Selena Simmons-Duffin and Rob Stein contributed reporting to this piece.
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