Monarez to testify in Senate hearing next week

Susan Monarez, the former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director who was pushed out over vaccine policy after just a month on the job, is set to testify before the Senate next week — setting the stage for new revelations about the impacts of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sweeping changes to the agency. The Senate’s health panel will hear on Sept. 17 from Monarez and Debra Houry, who was a top CDC official before resigning in August as Monarez was being pushed out, citing “ongoing changes” she said prevented her from doing her job. Advertisement Department of Health and Human Services officials will be invited to respond to their testimony in a future hearing, according to the committee’s notice of next week’s hearing. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a doctor who leads the Senate health panel, has previously expressed concerns about Kennedy’s vaccine views and their potential impacts on policymaking in federal health agencies. At a hearing last week, the senator probed Kennedy with questions. Next week’s hearing is scheduled a day before a meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, which Cassidy has suggested should be delayed while allegations about the group are investigated. Advertisement Other Republicans have also been skeptical of Kennedy’s vaccine policy and personnel changes, and even President Trump has at times appeared to take different positions on vaccines than Kennedy’s HHS. Monarez’s testimony will come in the wake of Kennedy’s continued remaking of the CDC, which included pushing Monarez out because she wouldn’t accept the recommendations of the vaccine advisory committee. Other officials resigned amid her ouster, warning the agency was becoming politicized and should no longer be fully trusted as an authority on health information. The reforms are already having implications for the nation’s health, experts have warned. But in a hearing last week, Kennedy repeatedly said Monarez had lied about her ouster and said the changes at the agency were necessary to deliver his agenda of making America healthier. “To protect children’s health, Americans need to know what has happened and is happening at the CDC,” Cassidy said in a statement. “They need to be reassured that their child’s health is given priority. Radical transparency is the only way to do that.”