On April 24, some employees were sent an email from a supervisor that confirmed that HHS now owned the CDC’s main social media platforms, including its X, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.
“We were also notified that HHS is not accepting content for those channels at this time,” the email added.
In response to a request for comment regarding the changes to communication practices at the CDC, the director of communications at HHS, Andrew Nixon, cast doubt on what the workers said.
“It’s unfortunate to see career officials spreading false rumors,” Nixon replied.
Since HHS approval was instituted as a requirement for posting, almost no newsletters have been sent to the tens of thousands of people who subscribe to them, CDC workers said. The last update sent out by the CDC’s Health Alert Network was regarding the risk of dengue infection on March 18, even though outbreaks of salmonella and listeria were acknowledged in May by the CDC on its website.
When CDC publications have gone out, some have been delayed or missing information. A recent release of CDC data regarding the prevalence of HIV in the U.S. cautioned that it “does not include data on PrEP coverage,” referring to medication taken by individuals to prevent HIV infection. “CDC is unable to resume PrEP coverage at this time, due to a reduction in force affecting the Division of HIV Prevention (DHP).”
Two CDC employees who work in communications told NPR that fewer than half of the public health posts they’ve sent to HHS for approval have been cleared for publication on social media. Even posts that include basic information about recent disease outbreaks, like the number of people sickened or hospitalized, have not been posted as requested by employees, NPR confirmed after reviewing posts submitted for approval by an employee. Communications workers say they are also suggesting fewer health posts because they anticipate that their posts will be rejected.
“Everything is getting bottlenecked at the top,” said a worker. “It is extraordinarily time-consuming and backlogs us by weeks, if not months.”
The consequences could be deadly, experts said.
“When you have an outbreak of something like listeria, if you are a person who is pregnant and you consume food items that might have listeria in it that CDC should be warning you about, you run the risk of the baby that you are carrying dying,” said Guest. “And so that information needs to get out there.”
‘Propaganda’ instead of public health
On April 1, thousands of federal health workers were laid off as part of the government’s “reduction in force.” Communication professionals at the CDC were not spared. Almost everyone at the CDC whose primary job was to communicate with the press was laid off, in addition to almost everyone whose job it was to provide records to the public. Every member of the CDC’s division of digital media was also told their jobs would be eliminated, workers at the CDC said.
“All the points of contact that we generally rely on to communicate with the American people have either been eliminated or dramatically reduced,” said Griffis, the former CDC communications director.
Removing all the CDC’s web developers, graphic designers and social media staffers simultaneously caused a problem. The CDC was suddenly locked out of its main social media accounts, said three people close to the situation.
“The passwords to those accounts were kept on a password protected Word doc,” said one worker at the CDC. “And that Word doc was inaccessible for anyone left, because all of the people that could have opened that document were fired.”
Most of the main accounts haven’t posted since the CDC’s digital media team was laid off. During March, the CDC’s main Facebook page posted more than 20 times — sometimes twice a day. The posts included information for pregnant women about how to take care of their developing babies and screenings for colorectal cancer.
The only main CDC account that has posted some content since April 1 is the CDC’s account on X, a platform owned by Elon Musk. He oversaw the Department of Government Efficiency, the organization that spearheaded efforts to lay off tens of thousands of workers across federal agencies.
On April 7, workers at the CDC said they were surprised to see the CDC’s main X account post a tweet for the first time in a week.
