Newsom Hires Former CDC Officials to Run New Public Health Network

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California appointed several former officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to oversee a state-led public health initiative to counter the efforts of the Trump administration.

Newsom announced the new “Public Health Network Innovation Exchange,” or PHNIX, in a press release Monday, pitching it as another step in the state’s efforts to fill “the vacuum left by the Trump administration’s systematic retreat from science and evidence-based public health.”

Earlier this month, Newsom — along with the governors of Oregon and Washington — announced a “West Coast Health Alliance” to “ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.”

PHNIX is set to be led by a former director of the CDC, Susan Monarez; a former chief medical officer of the CDC, Debra Houry; and Katelyn Jetelina, the founder and CEO of Your Local Epidemiologist.

The project is “a direct response to the federal dismantling of national disease prevention, protection, and tracking programs, the termination of life-saving health programs and erosion of evidence and science-based policies, and the withdrawal from the global public health community,” the press release continued.

Monarez was appointed as CDC director by the Trump administration in July but served in the role for less than a month. She was fired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after pushing back against a directive that he be allowed to preapprove vaccine recommendations.

“He just wanted blanket approval,” Monarez said during a hearing held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions earlier this year. “Even under pressure I could not replace evidence with ideology.”

Houry was with the CDC for 11 years. She was promoted to serve as acting principal deputy director under the Biden administration but resigned in protest after Monarez’s firing.

“Secretary Kennedy censored CDC science, politicized its processes and stripped leaders of independence,” Houry said during the same committee meeting in September. “I could not in good conscience remain under those conditions.”

President Donald Trump’s appointment of Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has resulted in a sweeping reorientation of the agency’s public health priorities. In just the last 10 months, Kennedy has fired the members of an influential vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with vaccine critics, canceled funding for mRNA vaccine research, recommended that states stop water fluoridation and insisted there’s an “environmental toxin” causing autism diagnoses, among other high-profile changes.

In her new role, Monarez will be in charge of coordinating with the private sector, technology and academic partners, while Houry will engage with existing public health alliances.

“This collaboration,” the release continued, “is critical at a time when our public health community needs to coordinate our response to evolving gaps in federal leadership.”