Former CDC heads warn Kennedy is endangering Americans

A sign marks the entrance to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

WASHINGTON — Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Republican and Democratic presidents warned on Monday that the decisions made by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., culminating in the firing of the CDC’s director, are putting Americans’ health at risk.

The warning, laid out in a guest opinion essay in the New York Times, comes days after the Trump administration fired Susan Monarez, less than a month into her tenure and four other directors resigned in protest, deepening disarray at the nation’s main public health agency.

Monarez had refused to adopt new limitations on the availability of some vaccines urged by Kennedy, saying they went against scientific evidence.

The nine essay authors, who include Dr. William Foege, who served as director of the CDC from 1977-1983 to Dr. Mandy Cohen, who led the agency from 2023 to 2025, said all of Kennedy’s moves to shake up U.S. federal health agencies, from firing thousands of employees to replacing health advisory board members to ending global vaccination programs, put all Americans at risk.

“We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security,” they wrote, adding that rural communities and vulnerable populations will be most at risk. “This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings,” they wrote.

The former CDC directors said that Kennedy has broken precedent with the role of health secretary by not heeding the expertise of the agency’s leaders. Kennedy fired Monarez because she did not approve of his recommendations to weaken vaccine policy.

“These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a CDC director. Not even close,” they wrote. “None of us would have agreed to the secretary’s demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities.”

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who votes with Democrats, penned a separate essay in the Times calling for Kennedy to resign over his ousting of Monarez.

Reporting by Valerie Volcovic

Editing by Sandra Maler