The Trump administration has implemented a temporary suspension on federal health agency communications with the public until the month’s end.
According to a memorandum accessed by The Associated Press, Dorothy Fink, acting secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, instructed agency leaders to halt regulations, guidance, announcements, press releases, social media posts and website posts pending approval from a political appointee. “As the new Administration considers its plan for managing the federal policy and public communications processes, it is important that the President’s appointees and designees have the opportunity to review and approve any regulations, guidance documents, and other public documents and communications (including social media),” said Fink.
The pause, which is in effect through February 1, also applies to anything intended to be published in the Federal Register, where the executive branch communicates rules and regulations, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientific publication. Agencies subject to the directive from the department of health and human services include the CDC, the national institutes of health, and the food and drug administration.
“The executive branch is a hierarchy,” Steven Grossman, who now consults for food and drug companies, said in an email. “Whether stated publicly or not, every new administration wants important commitments and positions to wait until new teams are in place and some semblance of hierarchy restored.”
Ali Khan, a former CDC outbreak investigator who is now dean of the University of Nebraska’s public health college, said that a pause is reasonable as a changing executive branch takes steps to become coordinated. “The only concern would be is if this is a prelude to going back to a prior approach of silencing the agencies around a political narrative,” he added.
Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that the communications pause could threaten public safety, as Americans depend on timely information from the CDC, the FDA, and other agencies to avoid foodborne illnesses and stay aware of other health issues. “When it comes to stopping outbreaks, every second counts. Confusion around the vaguely worded gag order is likely to lead to unnecessary delay in publishing urgent public alerts during active outbreaks,” Lurie said in a statement.
Jeffrey Klausner, a University of Southern California public health expert, echoed these concerns. “Local health officials and doctors depend on the CDC to get disease updates, timely prevention, testing and treatment guidelines and information about outbreaks,” he wrote in an email. “Shutting down public health communication stops a basic function of public health. Imagine if the government turned off fire sirens or other warning systems.”
During his first term also, President Donald Trump‘s political appointees tried to gain control over the CDC’s MMWR journal, which had published information about the Covid-19 pandemic that conflicted with messaging from the White House.
According to the current memo, some exceptions would be made for communications affecting “critical health, safety, environmental, financial or nation security functions”, but those would still be subject to review. The FDA has posted notices about warning letters sent to companies and a drug safety notice on Tuesday and Wednesday.
This comes after Trump signed an executive order on Day 1 of his presidency pulling US out of the WHO, citing the organization’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s influence over the body.
