Newsom announces new public health initiative led by ousted CDC officials
Two officials ousted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, including the agency’s former director, will lead a new nationally-focused initiative from California’s public health agency, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday.
The health experts will work with officials from like-minded states and with technology companies, including some in California’s booming AI industry, on public health data tracking, early warning systems for disease outbreaks and enhanced public communication, Newsom said at a press conference.
He said he hopes for the new group to stand as a counterweight to the current CDC administration, which during President Donald Trump’s second administration has cut back research budgets and grant funding and advanced controversial public health policies, particularly in the realm of vaccines.
The former CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez, left the agency in August when the Trump administration fired her amid a clash with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She later told a U.S. Senate panel that Kennedy had asked her to resign when she declined to back new vaccine recommendations she described as dangerously misguided.
The second former CDC official coming to work with California is the CDC’s former chief medical officer, Dr. Debra Houry. The official, known for her work on opioid issues, resigned shortly after Monarez’s firing, partially in protest, according to reporting by the New York Times.
Houry and Monarez will join state experts and a third public health official, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, to lead the new Public Health Network Innovation Exchange, whose acronym PHNIX invokes something new rising from the ashes.
“PHNIX is a direct response to the federal dismantling of national disease prevention, protection, and tracking programs, the termination of life-saving health programs and erosion of evidence and science-based policies, and the withdrawal from the global public health community,” Monday’s announcement read.
Newsom, who is entering his final year as California’s governor and is widely considered to have presidential ambitions, has increasingly sought to position the state as a counter to the second Trump presidency across a range of arenas.
The creation of PHNIX comes on the heels of the November passage of Proposition 50, which redrew the state’s congressional maps to counter Trump’s efforts to create more safe Republican districts in Texas ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Newsom noted Monday that California would not be able to match the scale of the federal government’s public health infrastructure, but said he hoped it would counter an “assault on science and truth and trust” that he accused the Trump administration of conducting at the CDC.
“It’s not a shadow CDC we’re creating, but it’s a shield,” Newsom said.
The new program is beginning with just $4 million in funding, money provided by the California Legislature through this year’s budget bill. Officials have not yet publicly disclosed the salaries for the new officials.
Though the concrete actions the new program will take remain to be seen, at Monday’s press conference the former CDC officials criticized a recent Kennedy-led effort to delay when newborn children receive hepatitis-B vaccines, saying the change could lead to increased illness and death.
“If we’re going to reevaluate the childhood vaccine schedule or anything else, we need to do it based on new science and not relitigating things or bringing ideology into it,” Houry said Monday. Earlier this month Newsom announced that the West Coast Health Alliance, in which California is joined by Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, was urging doctors and the public to reject the new guidelines.
Monarez and Houry will work on strengthening existing partnerships with other states and public and private research institutions, while Jetelina will advise health officials on building public confidence in medical institutions and the guidances they issue, according to a description of the program published by Newsom’s office.
This story was originally published December 15, 2025 at 11:25 AM.
