Senate Republicans started an effort on Wednesday to modernize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an attempt to rebuild trust in the federal public health agency five years after mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have made improving trust in federal health agencies a key agenda point, but Senate Republicans have stressed the need to make permanent changes that cannot be undone by the next administration. 

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“If CDC fails, Americans’ health is threatened,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said in a press release. “While I’m encouraged the Trump administration is committed to improving health transparency, we need lasting legislative reforms to ensure CDC is able to meet Americans’ public health needs.” 

Cassidy, chairman of the health committee in the Senate, is joined by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Tim Scott (R-SC).

The senators started a working group on Wednesday to draft legislative solutions to modernize the CDC, in part based on recommendations from healthcare industry stakeholders that Cassidy solicited in 2023 as the lead Republican on the health committee.

Improving data-sharing capacities within the departments at CDC and between state and local partners was highlighted as a much-needed area of improvement by various respondents to the 2023 information request.

The responses to Cassidy’s initial request from the Association of American Medical Colleges, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and the American Society for Microbiology each highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light persistent problems in the CDC’s data-sharing capacities for which congressional appropriations would be needed to fix permanently.

“Five years ago, the CDC stumbled its way through the pandemic, which cost us lives and time,” Scott said in a press statement. “In efforts to restore trust in public health, reforms need to take place so that the American people can trust this agency once again.”

Since taking office, both Trump and Kennedy have taken aim at the CDC. 

Shortly after Kennedy was confirmed in mid-February, an internal memo was released to the press explaining that approximately 1,300 CDC employees were being terminated, cutting the agency’s workforce by about 10%. Last week, 180 probationary employees at CDC were reinstated after a federal judge ruled that an Office of Personnel Management directive calling for mass firings was unlawful. 

Trump’s nominee for CDC director, David Weldon, will have his Senate confirmation hearing before Cassidy’s panel on Thursday, and he will likely articulate his vision for reforming the agency.

The desire to slash the CDC and increase accountability of the agency stems largely from a sharp decline in overall trust in federal public health systems following COVID-19. 

A 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly 1 in 4 people have little or no trust in the CDC and roughly 1 in 5 have little or no trust in state health departments.

When respondents in the study were asked about specific public health problems they trusted the CDC to handle, significant majorities said they felt it should be the agency’s top priority to tackle chronic disease, mental health, infant mortality, and the opioid epidemic. 

The policy areas that engendered the most distrust among study participants included COVID-19 and infectious disease policy, addressing racial and ethnic healthcare disparities, and preventing gun injuries. 

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Paul, who, like Cassidy, is a physician, blames pandemic-era policy errors for this marked decline and has been a staunch advocate of sweeping reforms. 

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC operated with no oversight while bureaucrats overstepped authority to expand their powers and the administrative state,” Paul said. “The American people have lost trust in public health, and part of our efforts toward rebuilding that trust is to prevent future overreach like we saw far too often during the pandemic.”