CDC deputy director Jennifer Shuford says she will leave after six months
Jennifer Shuford is expected to leave the US public health agency on 12 November, according to an agency email reported by The Guardian. Her departure follows further changes in CDC leadership.
Jennifer Shuford, deputy director and chief medical officer of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to leave the agency on 12 November after six months in the role, The Guardian reported on 27 October, citing an agency email. Her departure would be another change in the leadership of the country’s main public health agency.
In a statement sent by CDC director Erica Schwartz, Shuford said she was leaving ‘to spend more time with my family’. She thanked President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr for the opportunity to help lead the CDC. The Guardian reported that she was appointed by Trump in April as part of a four-person senior leadership team.
When Jennifer Shuford is expected to leave the CDC
The Guardian said Shuford’s departure is expected on 12 November, after the US midterm elections. Her statement gives a reason for leaving, but does not resolve differing accounts of what prompted the decision. Reuters reported, in an account carried by The Straits Times, that The Washington Post had cited one person who pointed to a family health issue and another who described disagreement with the administration’s vaccine policy. Neither account establishes Shuford’s underlying motive.
Reuters’ account also said The Washington Post had reported that Shuford would leave after the elections, citing sources. That report preceded The Guardian’s account of the agency email and did not independently establish the email’s contents. Reuters said the CDC and White House had not responded to requests for comment outside business hours.
Leadership and vaccine policy at the CDC
The four-person team that included Shuford was appointed after former CDC director Susan Monarez left less than a month into the job, according to The Guardian. Monarez publicly called directives from Kennedy ‘unscientific’, the newspaper reported. Shuford’s announced exit comes within months of those changes at the agency’s top level.
Reuters identified Shuford as a former Texas health commissioner and named Schwartz, healthcare executive Sean Slovenski and Food and Drug Administration official Sara Brenner among the other April leadership appointments. The appointments were intended to stabilise the CDC following Monarez’s departure, The Guardian reported.
The departure also comes amid changes in US vaccine policy. Reuters reported that Trump had unveiled plans to ask vaccine makers to split certain childhood shots into five separate doses. The reported policy disagreement is one account of Shuford’s decision, rather than an established explanation for it.
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Sources and context
- Trump-appointed CDC deputy director to resign after six months on the jobThe Guardian
- US CDC deputy director to leave Trump administration, paper saysReuters (carried by The Straits Times)
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.