Demetre Daskalakis likens his former colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to \u201chostages.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re sitting there doing their work \u2014 they\u2019re creating presentations, they\u2019re analyzing data, they\u2019re doing the surveillance,\u201d said Daskalakis, a former top official at the CDC who resigned<\/a> this summer along with two other leaders. \u201cBut then you have someone above who is making sweeping decisions without process and putting them on the CDC website as if they were gospel truth.\u201d<\/p>\n That was a reference to the agency, at the direction of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently reversing its stance<\/a> that vaccines don\u2019t cause autism, a move that Daskalakis said would have caused him to quit if he hadn\u2019t already. He was with the agency for more than four years, beginning in the last days of the first Trump administration as the director of the Division of HIV Prevention. In 2022, he helped lead the White House\u2019s mpox response. By the second Trump administration, he was serving as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. <\/p>\n Despite Kennedy\u2019s long record of anti-vaccine rhetoric, Daskalakis was initially optimistic<\/a> about the potential for good public health policy.\u00a0The feeling didn\u2019t last. As Kennedy led mass layoffs and began making unilateral decisions \u2014 firing<\/a> an entire vaccine advisory panel, handpicking<\/a> the new members, changing Covid-19 shot recommendations<\/a> \u2014 Daskalakis grew to believe science was being superseded by ideology. He began compiling a list of reasons that made it hard to stay in the job. The final straw wasn\u2019t the shooting on CDC campus in early August, which sent bullets directly through his own unoccupied office windows. It was later that month, after the ousting<\/a> of then-Director Susan Monarez.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEnough is enough,\u201d he wrote in his resignation letter, citing Kennedy\u2019s undermining of the agency and vaccine policy.<\/p>\n Now Daskalakis, an infectious disease physician, is taking his skills back to the city where they were honed working in HIV clinics and as deputy commissioner of the New York City health department. Starting in February, he\u2019ll serve as the chief medical officer of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, the LGBTQ+ clinic announced Wednesday. He\u2019ll also serve on the transition team for incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as there\u2019s a will to destroy public health, it\u2019s going to be really hard to fix it,\u201d Daskalakis said in an interview about his decision to move on from the CDC. \u201cI feel more confident that my ability to help the community is best served closer to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n Daskalakis spoke to STAT about the importance of local health, how he decided to leave the federal government, and what he thinks about Kennedy\u2019s latest moves.\u00a0<\/p>\n The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019re taking on the role of CMO at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, and you\u2019re also one of a couple dozen people on the health committee within Zohran Mamdani\u2019s transition team. I\u2019m struck by how locally focused both these positions are. What made you interested in these roles after leaving your position at the CDC?<\/p>\n My career has taken me from local to federal. I started really doing clinical work in New York City, and learned to do public health as an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital. Then I moved to the Department of Health in New York City and then over to CDC. As I learned more from the local, it became important for me to go to the place [CDC] where that local experience would influence the direction that public health went nationally and, frankly, globally.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an environment where I really don\u2019t think that federal public health is able to actually execute on its mission, this is when it\u2019s time to go back to local. For me, the opportunity to go back to New York City and back to the grassroots front line is extremely appealing. It becomes a local charge to have to execute on the public health mission. And I believe in the work that Callen-Lorde does \u2014 LGBTQ work has been at the core of my career in so many different things that I do. And New York City \u2014 though I was born in D.C. \u2014 is where I grew up from the perspective of my own social awareness as well as public health. And so all of it made sense to go back to my roots.<\/p>\n Can you talk about what your work will look like in each of these roles?<\/p>\n We haven\u2019t had our first health subcommittee meeting [for Mamdani], so I will know more when we go. \u2026 We\u2019re going to give him the advice that he needs to be able to move forward with a very strong health agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde, that\u2019s literally going back to my clinical roots, but also my community roots, so it sort of blends the two. I\u2019ve always seen patients, no matter where I\u2019ve been. When I was running parts of the [New York] Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, I was seeing patients at Mount Sinai. When I was working at CDC, I was seeing patients at Grady Hospital, at the Ponce clinic. So I will be seeing patients at Callen-Lorde, which is exciting. And then as the chief medical officer, I think my job is going to be making sure that the science and the operations are working together in a way that really provides the highest level of care and services to the LGBTQ+ population in New York City.<\/p>\n One of the things that\u2019s great about not being at the federal government anymore, is that I\u2019m able to comment on mis- and disinformation. Rather than misinformation, it\u2019s really a lot of distortion. As a physician, as a clinician, and as someone who\u2019s been a public health expert, I feel like my role is to continue to differentiate signal from noise. That\u2019s part of what I\u2019m going to be doing at Callen-Lorde for the community. It\u2019s important for physicians to speak out, and medical providers to speak out, especially when they\u2019re seeing things that are potentially bad for their patients.<\/p>\n