California, Oregon and Washington announced plans on Wednesday to form a "health alliance" to coordinate on unified public health recommendations, including guidance on vaccines.
The democratic governors of the three states said they formed the West Coast Health Alliance to counter what they call "blatant politicization" of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by the Trump administration. The alliance aims to ensure that California, Oregon and Washington residents "remain protected by science, not politics," according to a statement.
Through the partnership, the three states will start coordinating health guidelines by aligning immunization recommendations informed by respected national medical organizations. The alliance aims to provide residents with evidence-based guidance on vaccine safety and efficacy.
The announcement comes after a week of chaos at the CDC. Late last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) named Jim O'Neill, currently a deputy HHS secretary, as interim director to lead the CDC after Susan Monarez, Ph.D., was fired from her position at the helm of the agency.
Several of the CDC's top career scientists resigned in protest to Monarez's firing. Monday, nine former directors of the CDC, who worked under both Republicans and Democrats, condemned HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership of the agency in an op-ed in The New York Times.
RFK Jr. countered with his own op-ed, published in The Wall Street Journal, saying that he was focused on restoring "the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest[ing] in innovation, and rebuild[ing] trust through integrity and transparency."
Recent weeks have seen the CDC embroiled with turmoil amid a targeted shooting, employee terminations, revoked union recognition and some controversial decisions around vaccines.
In May, RFK Jr. announced that COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. As head of the HHS, he also revamped the CDC's vaccine advisory committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), by tossing all 17 members and replacing them with eight appointees with ties to vaccine skepticism.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the next round of COVID-19 vaccines but only for a smaller, high-risk group. The administration is restricting their use for people ages 65 and older, as well as adults and children over 6 months who have risk factors for developing severe COVID-19.
"The alliance represents a unified regional response to the Trump Administration’s destruction of the U.S. CDC’s credibility and scientific integrity," California Governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson wrote in a joint statement.
"The Alliance will help safeguard scientific expertise by ensuring that public health policies in California, Oregon, and Washington are informed by trusted scientists, clinicians, and other public health leaders," the governors said in the statement.
In June, California, Oregon and Washington condemned RFK Jr.'s removal of all 17 members of the CDC’s ACIP. "The absence of consistent, science-based federal leadership poses a direct threat to our nation’s health security. To protect the health of our communities, the West Coast Health Alliance will continue to ensure that our public health strategies are based on best available science," the three governors wrote.
“The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisors, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation’s health, are placing lives at risk,” Erica Pan, M.D., director and state public health officer at the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “California stands together with our public health and medical professional colleagues to uphold integrity and support our mission to protect the health of our communities.”
"Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives. But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most," said Sejal Hathi, M.D., director of the Oregon Health Authority.
The CDC's ACIP is scheduled to meet Sept. 18-19, and COVID-19 vaccines are on the agenda. But that meeting is uncertain.
U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D., R-La., chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called for that meeting to be indefinitely postponed “until significant oversight has been conducted,” noting that “any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”