CDC’s Cohen on the road again

Apr 05, 2024

With help from Robert King

Driving the Day

CDC director's travel has focused on Asia and Africa in 2024

COHEN GOES GLOBAL — Four months into the year, Dr. Mandy Cohen continues her push to restore faith in the CDC as the world’s premier public health agency.

The CDC head has traveled to Asia and Africa this year, visiting Cambodia, Ethiopia, Japan, Kenya and Zambia, to rebuild public trust, encourage data-sharing partnerships and drive vaccine uptake to squash emerging public health threats as the agency works to reform itself.

Why it matters: The CDC has faced skepticism and a lack of trust from lawmakers and the public following its handling of the pandemic. Since taking the agency’s helm, Cohen has made it her mission to restore confidence and reform the agency to better share public health information domestically and abroad.

“Data is the thing that knits us together,” Cohen told the World Vaccine Congress in Washington earlier this week.

A combined effort: Jeffrey Okoro, executive director of CFK Africa, a public health nongovernment organization that’s partnered with the CDC for nearly two decades, met with Cohen in Kenya. He told Pulse that CFK Africa operates one of the largest health surveillance programs outside of the U.S. and Cohen’s visit was an opportunity to share their work.

“To us, it’s about how we can protect, prevent, but, most importantly, share knowledge that we are learning from this health surveillance platform that we have,” he said.

Country by country: Cohen visited Cambodia’s public health authority to “observe the robust, joint efforts between U.S. CDC and partners to prevent, detect, and respond to emerging respiratory viral threats,” according to an HHS readout. In Ethiopia, Cohen discussed regional outbreaks like cholera.

In Japan, the CDC celebrated the opening of a new regional office to strengthen the “knowledge and information exchange between CDC and the region.”

“HHS remains committed to global health and security, and international partnership is vital to that goal,” HHS Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm, who led Cohen's delegation, said in a statement to Pulse. “We were pleased to meet with the ministers of health in each country and with the leadership of Africa CDC … to discuss how strong data and surveillance systems are critical to public health preparedness and response.”

Looking ahead: A decline in routine childhood vaccinations worldwide is a challenge. At the World Vaccine Congress, Cohen warned of a “bit of a step backwards,” saying as many as 25 million children worldwide have missed their routine vaccines, for viruses like measles, in the past couple of years.

Measles, in particular, has risen globally over the past year. Earlier this year, the United Nations health body warned that a global decline in vaccination rates was driving a rise in cases.

In the U.S., 97 cases have been detected since the start of the year, surpassing case counts for all of 2023.

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In Congress

Peter Daszak, waving from a car, after leaving the Wuhan Institute of Virology

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, shown here leaving the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in 2021, will testify before a House panel about the origins of Covid next month. | Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

COVID ORIGINS TESTIMONY — A high-profile witness from an environmental health nonprofit will publicly testify in Congress as part of lawmakers’ ongoing quest to understand how the pandemic started.

Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, will appear on the Hill on May 1 to discuss environmental health nonprofit’s research on coronaviruses in China, which several Republican lawmakers and scientists believe could have caused Covid-19, POLITICO’s Carmen Paun reports.

Daszak is a central figure in the theory that the pandemic could have started as a result of a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had been working on coronavirus research and is in the Chinese city where the first cases of Covid were identified. He’s rejected accusations that his work in cooperation with the Wuhan lab could have caused the pandemic.

House Republicans and Democrats will grill him on that and more.

The former accused him of lying in a November closed-door interview about a rejected grant application to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on coronavirus research.

“We invite you to correct the record,” several Republican committee chairs wrote to Daszak in a letter dated April 4, pointing to a draft grant application in which Daszak suggests that some potentially risky coronavirus research planned to take place in the U.S. could instead be performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Democrats on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said in a statement they had concerns about EcoHealth Alliance disregarding federal reporting requirements and wanted to hear from Daszak about it.

Daszak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Around the Agencies

CMS TARGETS MA MARKETING — The Biden administration finalized several changes to neuter the aggressive marketing of privately run Medicare Advantage plans, addressing a growing complaint from Capitol Hill, Robert reports.

CMS released a final rule Thursday that caps agent and broker compensation, nixing a loophole it says incentivizes aggressive tactics.

The new rule, which includes policy changes for 2025, aims to build on “efforts to strengthen consumer protections so that people with Medicare can more easily choose the Medicare coverage options that are right for them,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement.

A Medicare Advantage plan employs an agent or broker to help older Americans choose a plan. CMS sets a cap on the amount an insurer can pay them.

However, CMS is concerned that insurers are finding other ways to compensate agents and brokers besides the cap, such as paying unrelated fees. These additional sources of compensation could incentivize third parties to steer people to a plan where they’ll get the most money, CMS said in a release.

CMS finalized a $100 hike to the fixed cap for initial enrollments, which is higher than the $31 it proposed in November. The changes will take effect for the fall open enrollment season.

“This increase will eliminate variability in payments and improve the predictability of compensation for agents and brokers,” the agency said.

HEMP PRODUCT REGS NEEDED — Top FDA officials working on cannabis policy said Thursday that regulatory uncertainty for hemp-derived products is a problem but argued that only Congress can create a new regulatory pathway to fix the issue, POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig reports.

The remarks came at a Food and Drug Law Institute panel in Washington, D.C.

But regulating hemp-derived cannabis products doesn’t fit within any existing pathway, the panelists said. Instead, Congress needs to establish a new regulatory pathway because no existing pathway encompasses the different uses of hemp-derived cannabinoids —– from food additives to inhaled products to products for animals.

Senior FDA science adviser Patrick Cournoyer explained they’re also concerned about liver toxicity and its effects on reproductive health and whether hemp-derived products interact with other drugs. And Birenbaum explained that there are unique contaminant concerns based on the wide range of consumption methods for cannabis products.

Public Health

PHARMACIES BOOSTED BOOSTER — A federal partnership with pharmacies administered most of the bivalent Covid-19 booster, the CDC said Thursday. The bivalent booster, engineered to ward off the original virus as the Omicron variant, is no longer administered because a more updated shot is available.

Nearly 60 million doses of the Covid-19 bivalent booster, which was rolled out in fall 2022, were administered between September 2022 and September 2023, according to a CDC report. The Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, a collaboration between the federal government and pharmacies nationwide, distributed 67.7 percent of doses.

In rural areas, pharmacies in the program administered 60 percent of vaccine doses and in urban areas, 81.6 percent.

Why it matters: CDC researchers said this partnership could serve as a model for other routine vaccination services, but improvements are needed in collecting race and ethnicity data.

Names in the News

Anthony Wright is joining Families USA as its executive director. He previously was executive director of Health Access California.

Adaeze Enekwechi is now CEO of Cayaba Care, a maternal health company. She previously was an operating partner at Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe, a health care private equity firm, and is an Obama administration alum.

Anthony Fauci is joining Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute as a distinguished senior scholar. He currently is a distinguished professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and McCourt School of Public Policy.

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