Senior CDC official to quit amid turmoil over Trump's vaccine policies: report

Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s shifting vaccine policy, Jennifer Shuford, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will leave her position after next week's midterm elections, the Washington Post said Monday, citing sources. The CDC and the White House did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours. The paper said no reason for the departure was immediately clear. It cited one person as attributing the move to a family health issue. A second person said she had disagreed with the administration's approach to vaccine policy. Shuford is also the CDC's chief medical officer. A former Texas health commissioner, she was hired in April as part of a team that included former deputy surgeon general Erica Schwartz, healthcare executive Sean Slovenski, and FDA official Sara Brenner. President Donald Trump (L), alongside US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (C) and Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz (R), speaks to reporters after stepping off Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport (AFP/Getty)The step flagged by Trump would advance a long-standing goal of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist who has promoted a link between vaccines and autism that scientists have repeatedly debunked. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new flu vaccine that tested well in older adults. But the federal agency responsible for telling doctors and the public how to use it has made no recommendation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's inaction on the mFlusiva vaccine marks a break in longstanding practice. It's also an example of how the agency's vaccine review-and-recommendation process has been blown up in the past year, grinding decision-making to a halt. Efforts by vaccine-wary officials in President Donald Trump's administration to scale back shot recommendations have stalled. Federal guidance on new vaccines has stopped. And public discussion of vaccine policy questions that might cross political divides – including whether there's solid evidence to justify giving fewer shots to kids – has diminished. The shift in vaccine policy by ​Trump advances a long-standing goal of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist who has ⁠promoted ​a link between vaccines ​and autism that scientists have repeatedly debunked (AFP/Getty)Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s crusade to upend vaccine policy and the legal action opposing it have disrupted longstanding systems that deliver crucial health guidance to Americans, affecting whether people are getting the best available protection against vaccine-preventable diseases. “We find ourselves at a point where even if credible evidence (for a new vaccine policy) has reached a tipping point, we don’t have an obvious mechanism that can formalize that change,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher who studies government health agencies.