The drama and chaos surrounding the leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have taken another twist, with the announcement Monday that the agency’s No. 2 official, Ralph Abraham, has resigned.
A statement posted to the CDC’s website said Abraham, a former Louisiana surgeon general who was sworn in as the agency’s deputy secretary general only 2 1/2 months ago, stepped down to address “unforeseen family obligations.” The resignation is effective immediately.
“It has been an honor to serve alongside the dedicated public health professionals at the CDC and to support the agency’s critical mission,” Abraham said in the statement.
CDC staff were not directly informed of Abraham’s departure but instead learned about it from the statement on the agency’s website or from media reports, several employees told STAT.
The fact that Abraham didn’t send a note to staff surprised some employees. In his time at the agency, he had made a point of meeting with staff of different parts of the operation, urging all he encountered to call him “Doc.” He spoke about the organization as “family.”
And on Friday, he sent out an all-hands note urging staff to join him in welcoming Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, to the position of acting director of the CDC.
“In my time as Principal Deputy Director, I have been tremendously impressed by the dedication of our colleagues here,” he wrote in the email, a copy of which STAT has seen. “I can’t wait to introduce him [to] the men and women of CDC — after all — it is your stories, expertise, and willingness to serve the American people which truly make this a special place to work.”
Abraham said the CDC is “especially interested” in coordinating more closely with the NIH, which he said should be more doable with Bhattacharya heading both agencies.
Bhattacharya was named acting CDC director Feb. 18.
But there is no expectation that the NIH director will be relocating to Atlanta. His predecessor in the acting director role, Jim O’Neill — who was also juggling two jobs, the other being the deputy health secretary — was based in Washington.
STAT Plus: Exit of CDC’s acting director highlights agency’s lack of leader
Abraham, who began the CDC job in early January after being sworn in in December, was actually physically present at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta. People familiar with the CDC’s operations believe the organization is being run by a group of political appointees in the office of the director, most of whom have no medical or public health experience.
The CDC has only had a full-time director for four weeks in the current Trump administration. Susan Monarez, who briefly held that position, was fired late last August when she refused to agree to accept all vaccination policy recommendations from an advisory panel that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stacked with anti-vaccine figures.