CDC workers expected to return to campus this month

ATLANTA, Ga. – Staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters are being asked to return to campus in a couple of weeks.

Employees received an email that it was expected they’d all be back on campus by Sept. 15.

The order comes as the CDC tries to sort through not just recent cuts and the emotional aftermath of the deadly shooting, but also a wave of resignations.

Former CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez was ousted from her position after less than a month on the job, prompting upset employees to walk out, too.

Monarez was swiftly replaced by Jim O’Neill, who most recently served as deputy secretary of health and human services, working directly under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In an email to CDC employees on Friday, Kennedy tried to subdue growing frustrations.

“Your daily efforts—often unseen—save lives. Reform does not diminish your work; it strengthens it,” read Kennedy’s email. “The CDC must once again be the world’s leader in communicable disease prevention. Together, we will restore trust. Together, we will rebuild this institution into what it was always meant to be: a guardian of America’s health and security.”

Prior to his work with HHS, O’Neill was a biotech investor and speech writer for the Health Department under then-President George W. Bush.

O’Neill, however, has no prior medical training or expertise on infectious diseases and is, in fact, a noted critic of vaccines.

“I’m not going to talk about personnel issues, but you know the CDC is an agency that is very troubled for a very long time,” Kennedy said at a press conference on Thursday. “There’s a lot of trouble at CDC, and it’s going to require getting rid of some people over the long term in order for us to change the institutional culture.”

Employees, including some top officials who resigned in the wake of Monarez’s firing, say the culture issues start and end with Kennedy’s administration.

Hours after Monarez was let go, the heads of the CDC’s respiratory illness, public health data surveillance, and zoonotic disease departments all resigned. They walked out of the CDC for the final time on Thursday and were greeted by hundreds of cheering former colleagues.

“The direction that the country’s public health is going is not one that is evidence-based or science-based,” said Demetre Daskalakis, the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “CDC does not have bias. On the contrary, the people that have been installed by Secretary Kennedy are full of ideology and bias that will actually contaminate the science.”

Others who resigned issued dire warnings about the credibility of the CDC under Kennedy and its new director, O’Neill.

“If it’s coming from CDC scientists, you can trust it,” said Debra Houry, the former Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at CDC. “If it’s coming from the administration and hasn’t been cleared by CDC scientists or reviewed by it, then I would have concerns.”

Read Secretary Kennedy’s entire open letter to CDC employees here.

Copyright 2025 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.