This week, leaders at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) circulated a list of 16 strategic initiatives that offer the clearest view yet of the Trump administration’s plans for the agency under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The list, shared in an internal memo obtained by STAT, includes initiatives such as decreasing animal testing, advancing diagnostic preparedness, and “invigorating the CDC workforce.”
Former Department of Government Efficiency official Sam Beyda, who was recently named as the CDC’s deputy chief of staff, will lead five initiatives, Reuters reported.
One initiative, a call for increasing hepatitis B screening in pregnant women, could have immediate vaccine policy implications. The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, is set to meet early next month and discuss the hepatitis B vaccine.
Administration officials previously raised this idea of maternal screening as a way to delay an infant’s first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, which is currently given at birth. If a pregnant person tests negative for hepatitis B, some officials have suggested, the first dose of the vaccine could be delayed until one month of age.
Maternal screening alone insufficient, public health experts say
Public health experts warn that relying on maternal screening alone could miss infected infants, given missed or delayed prenatal care and the virus’s high transmissibility. Hepatitis B can spread via microscopic blood exposures, and infants remain vulnerable to infection from other household contacts, even when their mothers test negative.
While most pregnant women are screened, surveillance gaps persist. CDC data show that fewer than half of expected births to infected mothers were identified in 2013 and 2014.
Hepatitis B damages the liver, and there is no cure.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate health committee and a physician, criticized any effort that could weaken the existing recommendations, saying the vaccine has been central to reducing the virus’s incidence and that the new policy recommendations are being proposed by people who do not understand the epidemiology of the disease.
Hepatitis B damages the liver, and there is no cure.
Details about the 16 new initiatives remain sparse. The memo arrives amid agency turbulence, leadership turnover, and politically driven interference in scientific work. In a separate move this week unrelated to the initiative list, CDC quietly altered its webpage addressing the debunked link between vaccines and autism, shifting federal messaging closer to Kennedy’s long-standing views and vaccine skepticism.
