Once discouraged, now encouraged: Former CDC official gives new reasons to believe in US healthcare
She quit her post in disgust last August after serving a decade in the C-suite of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now Deb Houry, MD, MPH, is looking out over U.S. healthcare with glass-half-full enthusiasm.
She might be doing so, in part, to ward off a case of glass-half-empty pessimism.
This seems plausible to the casual reader because, in her Time magazine column of Aug. 5, Houry makes it clear she is still no fan of the HHS under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership.
It was just about a year ago that Houry resigned her post as CDC chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science rather than support RFK Jr.’s initiatives and priorities.
In the months since, she writes this week, she has worked with state health leaders, universities, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and organizations across the country.
It seems the collaborations have given her new hope.
“Like a phoenix rising from the ashes,” Houry writes, “new ways of working in public health are emerging.”
Among her reasons for the newfound good cheer are these four.
1. States are finding new ways to work together.
Some are collaborating and sharing information with one another through national organizations in the face of multistate threats such as Cyclospora, Houry points out. For example, California recently launched its PHNIX initiative connecting public health with technology, she writes, “to develop scalable solutions in the state that improve health, lower costs and strengthen emergency response.” More:
‘Rather than simply rebuilding what existed before, PHNIX asks what should be built next.’
2. Medicine is responding, too.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has continued issuing evidence-based vaccine recommendations, Houry notes, and has challenged federal actions that threaten the integrity of the vaccine advisory process, resulting in courts temporarily pausing these federal policies that might limit access to childhood vaccines.
‘The Vaccine Integrity Project, working with the American Medical Association and other organizations, has created an independent, science-driven process to review evidence on influenza, COVID, and RSV vaccines to counter the political interference impacting CDC’s recent vaccine guidance.’
3. Universities are rethinking what public health can be.
Yale’s new Future of Health Innovation Hub fosters a model in which public health ideas engage commercial partners and move from research into products and solutions, Houry states. Yale’s PopHIVE combines traditional government data sources with information from electronic health records and other sources, she adds, to provide “a timely picture of population health that is less impacted by government shutdowns or political priorities.”
‘With concerns about gaps in federal infectious disease monitoring during the World Cup, Georgetown University created a Health Security Operations Center that brought together universities, health systems, public health and technology partners to use real-time data to help identify emerging threats.’
4. Innovators are applying technology to problems that public health and healthcare have struggled to solve at scale.
“While it is too early to call them success stories, they are steps in the right direction,” Houry writes. For example, this month the Coalition for Health AI launched PULSE, “bringing public health agencies at state, tribal, local and territorial levels together with technology companies to test responsible use cases of generative AI ranging from biosurveillance to multilingual communication.”
‘OpenAI and Anthropic are providing access to their technology, and lessons from participating health departments will be shared so others can build on what works.’
“The U.S. still needs a CDC capable of detecting threats, coordinating across states, conducting rigorous science and providing trusted guidance,” Houry writes. “But resilience comes from having multiple sources of strength. Maybe that is a better ambition for American public health now: not simply to restore what has been lost, but to try to rebuild what worked, learn from what didn’t and establish something stronger in its place.”
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.