CDC does not updates important health data under the communications freeze

Failing to Publish Public Health Research Data via the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: The Case of the National Institutes of Health

The current freeze on communications for all agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services has sparked alarm among public health experts. Major agencies that are part of HHS include the CDC as well as the National Institutes of Health.

But by mid-afternoon Friday, the agency had not yet updated others, including FluView, which tracks flu strains, medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths from the illness, as well as those detailing weekly flu vaccinations or weekly COVID-19 vaccinations.

And on Thursday, the CDC failed to release the agency’s weekly publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, marking the first time in decades the agency has not published the highly regarded mainstay of public health communication.

“Preventing CDC from publishing scientific data via the MMWR represents a radical departure from protocol that will undermine the public’s trust in the Trump Administration,” Jennifer Nuzzo, who runs the Pandemic Center at Brown University, wrote in an email to NPR.

The publication provides Americans with information about the health of their communities and how to protect themselves. “This obvious political tampering with that process will only cast doubts on the administration’s intentions to keep Americans safe.”

“HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” the statement reads. There will be a brief pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review. There are exceptions where the HHS divisions think the announcement is mission critical and they will be made on a case by case basis.

Scientists are unclear whether the pause on travel only applies to federal scientists or all federally funded scientists, for example, he says. They don’t know if their grants proposals should still include DEI information or if they will be rejected.

“There’s just a lot of confusion and misinformation about exactly what researchers should be doing right now,” says David Gillum, the associate vice president of compliance and research administration at the University of Nevada, Reno.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the US health-research community this week after Donald Trump became the 47th US president. His administration has abruptly cancelled research-grant reviews, travel and trainings for scientists inside and outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public biomedical funder. Adding to the worry, the Trump team appears to have deleted entire websites about diversity programmes and grants from the agency’s website.

NIH and HHS spokespeople did not respond to queries about whether grant-review panels were considered public appearances and why they were cancelled, or about concerns from researchers that the pause will hinder the agency’s mission.

The advisory council panels are usually scheduled a year in advance and include more than 30 researchers, so it will take time to rearrange and possibly cause a domino effect if they are canceled. Researchers awaiting a grant-review decision “may be laid off or forced to seek employment elsewhere if funding is uncertain or delayed”, LaBonne says. It is possible to miss research milestones and jeopardize hiring, promotion and tenure decisions if you are a young researcher.

On Bluesky, Esther Choo, an emergency- medicine physician at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland wrote that a study section she was supposed to participate in was canceled this week. As a reviewer on grant proposals, she said, you constantly read ideas for research projects that could be “a game changer in health”. She hopes we get back on track soon. There are real people waiting on the science.