SACRAMENTO, California, September 4, 2025 (ENS) – To ensure that their states’ residents’ access to vaccines remains protected by science, not politics, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson are launching a new West Coast Health Alliance.
The state leaders say their new alliance responds to the Trump administration’s destruction of the credibility and scientific integrity of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC.
“President Donald Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people. The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk,” Governors Newsom, Kotek, and Ferguson said in a joint statement Wednesday.
“Our three states share a commitment to ensuring that public health recommendations are guided by safety, efficacy, transparency, access, and trust. 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 three governors said.
“Through this partnership, the three states will start coordinating health guidelines by aligning immunization recommendations informed by respected national medical organizations. This will allow residents to receive consistent, science-based recommendations they can rely on – regardless of shifting federal actions,” the governors explained.
“In the coming weeks, the Alliance will finalize shared principles to strengthen public confidence in vaccines and in public health,” they said. “While each state will independently pursue strategies shaped by their unique laws, geographies, histories, and peoples, these shared principles will form the foundations of the Alliance.”
Importantly, the three states “affirm and respect Tribal sovereignty, recognizing that Tribes maintain their sovereign authority over vaccine services.”
The governors’ announcement punctuates the recent turmoil at the CDC. On August 27, after less than a month on the job, the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, a Trump appointee confirmed by the U.S. Senate, after she declined to approve vaccine policies backed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Spokesman Kush Desai said she was not aligned with President Donald Trump’s agenda and refused to resign.
Several of the agency’s top career scientists also resigned in protest. On Monday, nine former directors of the CDC, who had worked under both Republicans and Democrats, blasted Kennedy’s leadership of the agency in an op-ed in “The New York Times entitled, “We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health.”
The NYT op-ed was authored by Richard Besser, Mandy K. Cohen, William Foege, Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, William Roper, David Satcher, Anne Schuchat, and Rochelle P. Walensky. The authors previously led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as directors or acting directors under Republican and Democratic administrations.
“We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or an acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations – every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump – alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health,” they wrote.
“What the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months – culminating in his decision to fire Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago – is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced,” the nine former CDC leaders fumed.
“Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more.
Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views,” they wrote.
“He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez – which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials – adds considerable fuel to this raging fire,” the former CDC directors wrote.
Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, answered with an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, saying he is “restoring the public’s trust in the CDC” and vaccine science in general by eliminating bias and conflicts of interest.
“Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives,” Dr. Sejal Hathi, head of the Oregon Health Authority, said in the three West Coast governors’ announcement Wednesday. “But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most.”
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, approved the new round of COVID-19 vaccines, but limited their availability to those who are considered high-risk. The FDA is authorized to approve new vaccines, and state legislatures decide which vaccines are required for school attendance.
The CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices is set to meet later this month to discuss recommendations for who should get the vaccines, providing guidance to pharmacists across the country.
Earlier this summer, Kennedy removed all 17 members from the advisory committee and has replaced them with members who have criticized vaccines and spread misinformation about them.
In June, California, Oregon, and Washington condemned Secretary Kennedy’s removal of all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
“Today,” they wrote on Wednesday, “we reaffirm our commitment to science-driven decision-making. We will continue to provide clear, evidence-based guidance to people living in our states, look to scientific experts in trusted medical professional organizations for recommendations, and work with public health leaders across the country to ensure all Americans are protected.”
“The absence of consistent, science-based federal leadership poses a direct threat to our nation’s health security,” the three states’ top health officials wrote. “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.”
Health Leaders Stand With Scientists
California State Public Health Officer and Director of the California Department of Public Health Erica Pan, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FAAP, said, “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.”
“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,” Dr. Pan said.
Dr. Pan is also a clinical professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.
In Oregon, Sejal Hathi, MD, MBA, who leads the Oregon Health Authority, said, “Our communities deserve clear and transparent communication about vaccines – communication grounded in science, not ideology. 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. That is why Oregon is committed, alongside California and Washington, to leading with science and delivering evidence-based recommendations that protect health, save lives, and restore confidence in our public health system.”
Dr. Hathi comes to Oregon after serving as New Jersey’s deputy health commissioner for public health services and its designated state health officer. She served in the Biden-Harris Administration for two years as the White House’s Senior Policy Advisor for Public Health. A board-certified attending physician, she also held joint faculty appointments as an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine & Bloomberg School of Public Health.
And, as leader of the Washington State Department of Health, Secretary of Health Dennis Worsham said, “When federal agencies abandon evidence-based recommendations in favor of ideology, we cannot continue down that same path. Washington State will not compromise when it comes to our values: science drives our public health policy.”
“Public health at its core is about prevention – preventing illness, preventing the spread of disease, and preventing early, avoidable deaths. We stand firmly with trusted medical professionals and organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as fellow West Coast health agencies – whose guidance remains rooted in rigorous research and clinical expertise. Our commitment is to the health and safety of our communities, protecting lives through prevention, and not yielding to unsubstantiated theories that dismiss decades of proven public health practice,” Secretary Worsham said.
The three leaders, Dr. Pan, Dr. Hathi, and Secretary Worsham, declared, “Since its founding, the CDC has been central to protecting Americans from disease. But recent leadership changes, reduced transparency, and the sidelining of long-trusted advisory bodies have impaired the agency’s capacity to prepare the nation for respiratory virus season and other public health challenges. In a vacuum of clear, evidence-based vaccine guidance, manufacturers lack reliable information to plan production, health care providers struggle to provide consistent plans of care, and families face uncertainty about access and coverage.”
Featured image: President Donald Trump swears in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, February 13, 2025, Oval Office, The White House, Washington, DC (Photo courtesy The White House)
