The Milbank Quarterly | August 23, 2022
Read the PublicationOn August 17th, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky acknowledged the CDC’s flawed response to the COVID-19 pandemic and announced an agency-wide restructuring. We applaud Dr. Walensky for the courage to re-examine and overhaul the agency’s structure and organizational culture. While we recognize it is far easier to critique complex organizations from the outside, and far more difficult for those charged with articulating and implementing agency mission, we offer four reforms we see as vital to the CDC’s renewal as the nation’s premier public health agency. We build on our earlier proposals for key operational steps to revitalize the CDC at the beginning of the Biden administration.