President Donald Trump will soon nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its acting chief, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, told agency employees at a Wednesday staff meeting.. This story also ran on CBS News. It can be republished for free.. According to a recording obtained by KFF Health News, Bhattacharya at one point suggested to CDC staff that Trump could name a new leader for the agency as soon as Thursday. “But if not, I don’t think much will change,” he said.. Though his official position as acting director was set to expire Wednesday, Bhattacharya will continue to lead the agency until the top spot is filled. Meanwhile, news outlets including Axios and The Washington Post reported that the administration was postponing filling the permanent director job amid the challenges of gaining Senate confirmation and other political pressures.. Bhattacharya opened the meeting by acknowledging the struggles the beleaguered agency has gone through over the past year. Workers faced multiple waves of job losses, and a gunman attacked the CDC’s Atlanta campus in August, killing a police officer and causing significant property damage. “I want to acknowledge very honestly that I know that it has been such a difficult year for the CDC and for every single one of you here,” Bhattacharya said.. He said the agency has begun to fill its leadership gaps. During his first meeting with the agency’s top leaders, he said, “I noticed almost every single one of them is acting.”. “We’ve made progress in filling key roles across the agency,” he said. “Leadership stability is essential to delivering our mission.”. The aim, he said, is to leave the agency in “a solid, secure place” so it can do its work “without so much of the turmoil that we’ve seen the last year.”. Email Sign-Up. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free weekly newsletter, “The Week in Brief.”. Your Email Address Sign Up. Bhattacharya invited questions from the CDC staffers, who repeatedly asked about staffing losses, morale, and their job security, as well as Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization.. “The politics of WHO withdrawal are above my pay grade,” Bhattacharya said. “What I do know is that without the CDC, the world will be in much worse health.”. Workforce Concerns. One employee told Bhattacharya the agency had lost a “huge amount” of “internal capacity and expertise in the past year” and it “continues to be very challenging for staff to do their jobs,” adding that “certain conditions are a bit demoralizing.”. The CDC can “function without leaders,” another speaker said. “We function without directors. And this entire team will make CDC run without you if you’re not here.”. Schedule F, an effort to reclassify certain federal employees in policy-related roles and reduce their civil service protections, drew some of the strongest stateme
