CNN — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been the nation’s foremost public health agency for three quarters of a century, but now it says it is time for a change.
Director Rochelle Walensky has laid out plans to overhaul how the agency works. She plans to remake the culture of the agency so it can move faster when responding to a public health crisis. She also wants to make it easier for the CDC to work with other parts of the government and to simplify the CDC website.
The changes aim to restore public trust after acknowledged missteps during the COVID-19 pandemic including little capacity for testing in the early months. The CDC was widely criticized throughout the pandemic for what some saw as confusing and contradictory guidance. Many also felt the agency moved to slowly.
Walensky plans to bring HHS Deputy Secretary Mary Wakefield to the CDC to oversee the reorganization.
Among the changes is a move of the Division of Laboratory Science and the Office of Sciences to report directly to the CDC director, a new office of intergovernmental affairs, and a new equity office to increase diversity.
Walensky is also calling for additional funding and greater authority over getting crucial data from states. That would require Congressional approval.
[…] Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency. […]