What Gives Me Hope About the Future of Public Health in the U.S.

I spent a decade at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and believe deeply that our country needs strong, independent federal health institutions. States cannot replace national disease surveillance, reference laboratories, research, or the ability to coordinate a response across 50 states.But since leaving government almost a year ago, I have had a different vantage point. I have worked with state health leaders, universities, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and organizations across the country. And amid the significant disruption, I see something else happening. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, new ways of working in public health are emerging.States are finding new ways to work together. The West Coast Health Alliance and the Northeast Public Health Collaborative have aligned states in their regions on evidence-based vaccine recommendations after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. And this isn’t simply a red-state or blue-state phenomenon. When Texas needed greater capacity for measles testing, its public health laboratory developed a high-throughput approach that...