Since dismantling the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, or OPPR, the Trump administration has been tested by a record-breaking measles outbreak, a cruise-ship hantavirus outbreak, an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a lettuce-dwelling parasite that sickened thousands.
The White House recently staffed the office, which at its peak in 2024 had 15 employees, with just one health official, along with a second biosecurity specialist at the National Security Council. Former government health officials say that is far from where the office needs to be to effectively combat dangerous pathogens.
“That is a start, but it is not nearly enough,” said a former White House official familiar with the health security functions of the National Security Council and OPPR, who requested anonymity to speak freely about their former employer.
“You can’t run an Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy as an army of one,” they continued.
Trending
OPPR was created to coordinate cross-agency responses to major public health risks. But that office has been empty since mid-2025, after all of the staffers from the Biden administration left and the health official appointed by the Trump administration to lead it, Gerald Parker, resigned.
Since then, the Trump administration has been dogged by criticism from public health experts for having a slow or inadequate response to major outbreaks.
In early July, the administration appointed Sara Brenner, a former Food and Drug Administration official, to lead OPPR, Bloomberg reported, effectively reforming the office. Another health official, Rachel Idowu, was reappointed to the National Security Council to serve as its director of bioresponse.
Former health officials say the appointments could indicate that the White House is seeking to be more involved in outbreak response.
“Sometimes it’s hard for the agencies to coordinate alone, and somebody needs to break the tie and say who’s in charge,” one former government official said.
A White House spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the the National Security Council, Homeland Security Council and Domestic Policy Council are “together handling pandemic preparedness functions to fully account for the global and domestic needs in close partnership with the agencies.”
“Dr. Sara Brenner is on detail from HHS to lead the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response in order to assist with the White House’s response to the multiple ongoing outbreaks,” the spokesperson wrote.
Two former health officials told NOTUS that Idowu and Brenner were experienced and well positioned to strengthen the administration’s pandemic policy and response.
Idowu in particular, they said, indicated that the administration wants to strengthen its response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo, which has exploded in case counts and is on track to be the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. Idowu, a career epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was heavily involved in the response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
“Truly the right person to have in that office. She can do the work of two or three,” one health official said of Idowu.
Even so, former officials said that wasn’t enough.
“There is a tremendous amount of work to be done,” Bryon Cohen, a former adviser to OPPR, said in an email. He added that Idowu and Brenner are two “very experienced, capable people” to lead pandemic preparedness activities.
“Those two individuals only have so much time in the day, and they deserve a full staff to help them carry out their mission,” Cohen said.
“What they’ll have to do is be very selective in terms of what they prioritize,” the first former health official said.
Under the previous administration, a large part of the office’s job was putting together a playbook on how to respond to outbreaks. That playbook was transferred to the National Security Council last year when OPPR was closing up shop — though it’s not clear if the Trump administration has made use of it since.
“I do think they have pulled it out. I don’t know how they’re following it, necessarily,” the second former official said. They expected Idowu and Brenner to take advantage of it.
Several former officials pointed out that during the Biden administration, OPPR also played an important role in getting biothreat policy out the door. Trump signed an executive order in 2025 putting a moratorium on so-called “gain-of-function” research, or infectious disease research that has the potential to create a pathogen that is more harmful to humans.
That executive order set deadlines of 90, 120 and 180 days for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to release modified guidelines for researchers. Those new guidelines have yet to be released.
“We’re now a year later, and those policies still have not been finished. And that’s because the people who work these issues at NSC and OSTP keep turning over,” a former government official said. “The government can’t do interagency long-term preparedness policy when they don’t have the people to coordinate that.”
The former official said they felt like Brenner’s appointment to OPPR signified a desire to have someone the administration could trust in the role. Brenner has publicly aligned herself with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., though she has not spoken publicly about her views on gain-of-function research.
In a statement, the White House spokesperson said the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are “prioritizing innovation and gold-standard science to ensure pandemic preparedness while also correcting course to prevent dangerous gain of function research and apply lessons learned from the damaging Biden approach of prolonged lockdowns and vaccine mandates.”
With limited staffing, all five former health officials who spoke to NOTUS said the U.S. is at risk of being underprepared for future infectious disease threats.
One used the World Cup to explain the danger.
“We are a team on the field with half of our players having been given red cards, and we’re going up against the Argentinas, Spains and Brazils of the world,” they said. “Viruses and other infectious diseases and threats don’t stop playing.”
Author
