Latest news with #KevinGriffis
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Worried about foodborne illness this Memorial Day? Don't count on the CDC's help.
As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Health Alert Network, tasked with sending critical public health information on disease outbreaks and prevention tips to health professionals and the public, hadn't published an alert since March 18. That March alert focused on the risk of dengue infection, particularly in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. There's been no shortage of news the public should have been informed about since then, including outbreaks of salmonella and listeria this month, but the CDC has grown noticeably silent. And now we've reached Memorial Day, when families traditionally enjoy foods at picnics and barbecues. Imagine going to such a cookout and not knowing if it's been determined that the brand of meat on the table is free of potentially deadly bacteria. The CDC's reluctance to provide transparent information about current disease outbreaks leaves Americans vulnerable. Front-line health care workers get less information to share with their patients on how to mitigate the spread of outbreaks, and the general public doesn't receive timely warnings on what diseases to look out for or what foods or produce to avoid if there's an active foodborne illness spreading. As a physician and public health expert, I rely regularly on CDC newsletters to help inform my articles and videos in educating the public on the most pressing health issues. Without these newsletters and health alerts, finding credible sources on important health updates has become more difficult. When the public lacks information on disease outbreaks, people can't take precautions to protect themselves or others. The absence of transparent communication breeds confusion and mistrust. 'Public health functions best when its experts are allowed to communicate the work that they do in real time, and that's not happening,' Kevin Griffis, the director of communications at the CDC until March, told NPR. 'That could put people's lives at risk.' Speaking of the general absence of information coming from the CDC, Dr. Jodie Guest, a professor and senior vice chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, told NPR, 'The whole goal is to say, this is what we know. And here are the best recommendations from experts in the field.' Americans are already paying the price for the lack of effective communication during disease outbreaks. Look no further than the current measles outbreak in Texas, where over 700 people have been infected, including two unvaccinated children who have died. Some infected children with measles were hospitalized with vitamin A toxicity after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrongly touted vitamin A as a treatment for measles. The clamps on health communication represents a public health crisis in the making. People have died and will continue to die if evidence-based health recommendations are not more transparent to the American public. The two measles deaths in Texas could have been entirely prevented with vaccination. We must demand more from the CDC and hold the agency accountable for providing lifesaving health information that has been a part of its DNA for decades. The next foodborne illness will not wait for a press release or federal funding. In his first address to HHS workers, Kennedy promised 'radical transparency' with respect to health initiatives to help restore public trust in health. Instead, flu vaccination campaigns have been halted, medical journals are receiving threatening letters from the Justice Department alleging bias and conflict of interest issues, and important health information on disease outbreaks is not being communicated broadly through the avenues of the CDC. The American public deserves better from the CDC. Public health is an invisible infrastructure that supports everything from our schools to our economy and daily living. When it's dismantled, everything falls apart. Our ability to stay healthy depends in large part on receiving clear and effective communication. If the CDC stays silent, then the American people will be in the dark on trying to mitigate the spread of deadly disease outbreaks. Another disease outbreak is always around the corner. And the CDC needs to recommit to its mission and make sure the American public will be informed about it. This article was originally published on
Washington Post
25-03-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
When the government becomes a health misinformation superspreader
Kevin Griffis was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's office of communications from 2022 until last week. Friday was my last day leading communications at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I left my job because I believe public health policy must always be guided by facts and not fantasy. Upon his confirmation last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inherited a reformed and revamped CDC. As we moved past the height of the covid-19 pandemic, the agency took stock of its shortcomings and launched initiatives to improve its communications (among other areas), with a particular focus on internal coordination. Our goal was to communicate faster and more clearly. America's federal public health messaging has not always gotten everything right, but health-care providers and the broader public could have confidence that recommendations were made after careful effort to understand and apply the best available science. Consider the case of the Missouri resident who tested positive for avian flu in August. The individual, who had no known exposure to livestock or wild birds, was hospitalized for gastrointestinal symptoms. The patient had a history of chronic respiratory illness. A test in the hospital was positive for Flu A, which was later confirmed to be avian flu. The state then traced everyone the patient could have exposed and who had symptoms around the same time. They turned up six health-care workers and a family member who was also sick. The facts raised a critical question: Were we seeing, for the first time in the United States, human-to-human transmission of a virus that historically kills about half of infected people? The case was complex, but it was vital to convey what we knew — and did not know — about the answer. CDC scientists painstakingly tested the blood of the exposed individuals, using multiple types of assays. The health-care workers tested negative, but the results from the positive individual and the family member were complicated. CDC communicators worked with the agency's infectious-disease experts to prepare materials that told the story of the case. We walked reporters through the details, spending hours answering questions. We also held a call for scientists and livestock health experts across the country to talk through the details with CDC scientists and key leaders. The results of the testing and the epidemiological data gathered about the family members supported a single, common exposure to avian flu and not human-to-human transmission. That meant the CDC's risk assessment for the general public remained low. All this was done to help providers and the public better understand a mystery involving a dangerous virus. It's hard to overstate how different things are today. Now, public health communications have slowed to trickle. The CDC hasn't held a public briefing, despite multiple disease outbreaks, since President Donald Trump's inauguration. Instead of seeking guidance about how to combat the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico from the world-leading epidemiologists and virologists he oversees, Kennedy is listening to fringe voices who reinforce his personal beliefs. Kennedy has promoted unproven treatments for measles, such as the antibiotic clarithromycin — a drug that has no effect on viral infections. He also suggested distributing Vitamin A, which does not prevent measles. Meanwhile, in my final weeks at the CDC, I watched as career infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy's preferred treatments. All this misdirection is a waste of federal dollars that will do nothing to control the outbreak. It also could cost lives. Public health communications should be about empowering people with reliable, science-based information, so they can make their own health decisions. Unfortunately, we can't count on Kennedy's HHS for that anymore. It is painful to say this, given my time in government service, but the United States urgently needs a strong alternative to the government public health guidance it has relied on in the past. I urge public health experts to come together to invest in organizations that provide independent, trustworthy sources of information on vital public health matters. This could take on many forms. But to be successful and durable, it's essential that any such effort foster two-way communication. Without feedback from affected communities, it's harder to know what concerns people have and where information is missing. Also needed are accessible online resources, written in language that's clear and easy to understand. Finally, given how people seek and consume health information, we need coordinated networks of experts, scientists and providers willing to share and amplify accurate information in real time via their social media platforms. In short, the effort needs to match the scope and energy of the entities spreading bad information — including, unfortunately, parts of the U.S. government. My first-hand experience over the recent troubling weeks convinced me thatKennedy and his team are working to bend science to fit their own narratives, rather than allowing facts to guide policy. Let's act now to ensure that the American people continue to have access to reliable, reality-based information they need to protect their health.
