{"id":266055,"date":"2026-02-03T20:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T20:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266055\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T20:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T20:40:10","slug":"states-and-medical-societies-are-stepping-up-to-fill-the-cdcs-data-void","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266055\/","title":{"rendered":"States and medical societies are stepping up to fill the CDC\u2019s data void"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has historically been the pinnacle of U.S. public health. The agency has been a leading voice for evidence-backed health guidance and a sentinel for deadly disease outbreaks for decades. But over the past year, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Trump administration have stripped the CDC of funding<\/a>, programs<\/a>, staff<\/a> and agency leaders<\/a>. News and insider reports indicate that these changes have interrupted operations dramatically\u2014and a new report gives an inside look<\/a> at the consequences for public health. An audit published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that dozens of public CDC databases have gone dark. Thirty-eight routinely updated datasets, most related to vaccines, have been paused since at least the spring of 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tend to assume that federal government data is solid. It\u2019s reliable; it\u2019s consistent,\u201d says study co-author Janet Freilich, a Boston University law professor, who has been studying changes in government data in recent years. \u201cAt least on consistency, we weren\u2019t seeing that here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now state and local governments and independent organizations are trying to fill the vacuum left by the CDC and other national public health agencies.<\/p>\n

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Several (mostly blue) states have joined forces to create regional health alliances<\/a> that are helping to coordinate and preserve vaccine guidelines. Governors are banding together to help communicate public health information and strengthen policy and funding across state lines. Medical societies are also speaking out in defense of evidence-based health recommendations on subjects ranging from vaccines<\/a> to gender-affirming care<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust in federal health institutions has plummeted under [Kennedy\u2019s] watch to the extent that you are now seeing the formation of these different regional coalitions,\u201d says Jerome Adams, who served as U.S. surgeon general under the first Trump administration<\/a> and Indiana\u2019s health commissioner from 2014 to 2017. Adams and other experts say such efforts can help mitigate some of the losses, but they worry that a patchwork public health network could widen health care gaps and have other long-term effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the fact that these states are coming together is a generally positive step,\u201d says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. \u201cBut make no mistake: it is not going to replace what the CDC once did, and Americans will be harmed as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CDC hosts thousands of repositories of epidemiological data on everything from infection to mortality and vaccination rates. Real-time information is crucial for an effective public health response. In the new report, the authors flag datasets that hadn\u2019t been updated within their designated frequency (i.e., weekly or monthly) plus an additional 30-day observational grace period. They found 38 databases that had been paused\u2014with 34 showing no new data entries in six months or more. In a follow-up analysis on December 2, 2025, only one of the 38 datasets had been updated.<\/p>\n

The majority of the paused databases\u201487 percent\u2014pertained to vaccines, such as monthly vaccination rates for COVID, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza. A handful of databases addressed emergency department visits from respiratory diseases and drug overdose deaths.<\/p>\n

The study could not determine exactly why these datasets ceased updating, but experts have several theories. The government shutdown from October 1 to November 12, 2025, stalled national flu reporting<\/a>, for example. But Freilich says most of the delays persisted beyond the shutdown. The CDC\u2019s reorganization and staffing cuts may have made it hard to maintain regular data entries. There\u2019s also a particularly ominous possibility: \u201cWe wondered if there was a deprioritization of some of this data collection, particularly as it relates to vaccines, and we wondered if it might be political,\u201d Freilich says.<\/p>\n

Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard told Scientific American that \u201cchanges to individual dashboards or update schedules reflect routine data quality and system management decisions, not political direction.\u201d Hilliard denied that the CDC had stopped reporting flu, COVID or RSV data. She didn\u2019t address questions about paused vaccine-related data, however.<\/p>\n

Kennedy has long been vocal about his antivaccine views and has made several baseless moves to roll back vaccines since taking the helm at HHS. Most recently, the CDC scaled back its childhood vaccine schedule<\/a>\u2014reducing the number of diseases covered from 17 to 11.<\/p>\n

As data disappears and health recommendations slacken, independent groups are rallying together to fill the public health data and leadership void.<\/p>\n

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its own childhood vaccine schedule, which recommends all the shots that had been previously recommended by the CDC. Last week 12 medical societies rejected the CDC\u2019s new schedule and instead endorsed the AAP\u2019s guidance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Individual states have also teamed up to reinforce vaccine access. In the fall of 2025 state leaders and local public health advisers created the West Coast Health Alliance and the Northeast Public Health Collaborative to establish regional vaccine recommendations after the Trump administration said healthy adults and children don\u2019t need to get COVID vaccines<\/a>. The alliances have since rejected other CDC changes to vaccine and health recommendations and have instead backed the AAP\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no medically justified reason to downgrade the recommendations for these dangerous diseases,\u201d said Sean O\u2019Leary, chair of the AAP\u2019s Committee on Infectious Diseases, in a recent press briefing. \u201cWe have worked [alongside] government agencies enthusiastically,\u201d he added. \u201cUnfortunately, the environment we\u2019re operating in today is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CDC has said all vaccines will still be covered by insurance, but the AAP and medical experts are working to verify that directly with the insurers themselves.<\/p>\n

Governors are also stepping up. Fifteen governors\u2014so far of mostly blue states, such as California, Illinois and New York State, and the U.S. territory of Guam\u2014formed the Governors Public Health Alliance<\/a>, a pact to support and ensure access to health care across state lines.<\/p>\n

These state and territory leaders have long been \u201cchief executives\u201d on the front lines of health issues, says Raj Panjabi, a public health adviser to the group and a former White House senior director for global health security and biodefense under the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernors have always been there in the driver\u2019s seat when it comes to responding to health threats like infectious disease such as avian flu, mpox or RSV,\u201d Panjabi says.<\/p>\n

Some of the paused CDC databases have resumed updates since December 2025, Freilich says. But any interruption can delay action and cost lives. When data go dark, so does public health officials\u2019 view of population vulnerabilities and disease threats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing now, from this study and previous work, is that the federal government is not always a reliable source of these basic, granular pieces of information that we tend to use to build a variety of tools and policy responses,\u201d Freilich says.<\/p>\n

During major health threats, states have historically called upon the CDC to deploy federal epidemiologists and scientists to help trace sources of infection and deliver tools, such as vaccines, to vulnerable communities. Information sharing about infection rates, symptoms and prevention measures can be key during a multistate outbreak.<\/p>\n

Luckily, Freilich points out, \u201ca lot of public health data comes from state governments initially.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuzzo and Adams generally agree that the recent state and regional public health efforts have some strengths. Exchanging data and jointly planning response efforts or vaccine rollouts can maximize staff power and resources. Local leaders have a more intimate understanding of their communities, which may lead to more effective policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cCulturally, what works in Boston isn\u2019t the same thing that\u2019s going to work in Boise,\u201d Adams says.<\/p>\n

Panjabi emphasizes, however, that these new collectives, including the Governors Public Health Alliance, do not replace the federal government. That becomes extremely apparent in national\u2014or global\u2014health crises, such as pandemics.<\/p>\n

Adams agrees. \u201cWho do people go to if we have another pandemic, and there\u2019s no central authority that people trust?\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what the policies are in Indiana if, every spring and every fall break, a third of your state is traveling to other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams worries that such a fractured public health system will ultimately worsen health disparities\u2014that people from marginalized communities and populations will have a harder time getting access to care. \u201cYou\u2019re going to see different standards of care and practice in different regions of the country,\u201d he says, \u201cand that\u2019s deeply concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuzzo shares similar concerns about growing health divides as democratic states and governors largely lead the charge: \u201cIt should not matter where you live or what political party your governor or legislative representatives are, whether or not you have access to lifesaving tools like vaccines and information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has historically been the pinnacle of U.S. public health. The agency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-266055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}