Aug. 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced plans to revive its reputation, including faster and more transparent communication, following heavy criticism over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and slow response to the recent monkeypox outbreak.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced a series of changes Wednesday to overhaul the agency and how it shares important health information with the public, following a scathing external review.
"For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations," Walensky said in an email to staff. "As a long-time admirer of this agency and a champion for public health, I want us all to do better."
Walensky said the changes will shift the CDC to a more public-focused agency from its previous academic mindset that created "confusing and overwhelming documents" as well as a website that is "not easy to navigate."
With Wednesday's announcement, the CDC promised to publish scientific data quicker with "plain language" guidance. The CDC also announced it will appoint former Deputy HHS Secretary Mary Wakefield to create a new executive council to implement the changes.
"My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration , communication and timeliness," Walensky said.
The overhaul announcement comes after an external review earlier this year.
The review, led by Jim Macrae, an official in the Department of Health and Human Services, criticized the CDC's slow response in sharing scientific data and lack of transparency as to its "current level of understanding" during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Macrae interviewed 120 CDC staffers and people outside the agency to come up with a number of recommended improvements -- including faster release of scientific data, translating confusing science into easy-to-understand information, working better with other health agencies and training CDC staff to respond better to public health emergencies.
The CDC "needs to make some changes for how it communicates and how it operates - to be faster, to be nimbler, to use more plain-spoken language," said a CDC official who discussed the changes before they were announced.
A second review by CDC Chief of Staff Sherri Berger examined the agency's operations, finding the "traditional scientific and communication processes were not adequate to effectively respond to a crisis the size and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic," according to a CDC statement.
Both external reviews were ordered earlier this year after the CDC faced public backlash for its shifting and confusing guidance during the pandemic over mask-wearing, testing and isolation.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the mistakes the CDC made during the COVID-19 pandemic are now being repeated with the monkeypox outbreak.
"Our country's response to monkeypox has been plagued by the same shortcomings we had with COVID-19," Gottlieb wrote in The New York Times last month.
"Now if monkeypox gains a permanent foothold in the United States and becomes an endemic virus that joins our circulating repertoire of pathogens, it will be one of the worst public health failures in modern times not only because of the pain and peril of the disease, but also because it was so avoidable."
Read More