A Coalition for the Next Crisis

HPN: How can the Governors Public Health Alliance directly affect policy?

Rohde: The Governors Public Health Alliance can exert significant influence on state and national health policy by aligning executive leadership to advance coordinated, evidence-based public health strategies. Through bipartisan collaboration, the Alliance can directly affect:

• Public health infrastructure and funding. Advocate for sustained, long-term investments in laboratory capacity, surveillance systems, and the essential public health workforce.
• Data modernization and integration. Promote standardized, interoperable data systems that enhance real-time information sharing and outbreak response.
• Workforce development policies. Support legislation and initiatives that strengthen educational pipelines, credentialing, and retention of laboratory and public health professionals.
• Preparedness and response coordination. Influence comprehensive, state-level emergency preparedness frameworks to ensure consistent, science-driven responses to emerging health threats.

By leveraging the collective authority of governors, the Alliance can depoliticize public health, strengthen national resilience, and ensure equitable access to essential health protections across all communities.

HPN: How might public health agencies be affected when their work becomes a point of national debate?

Rohde: Public health, healthcare, research, and similar areas should never be politicized, in my professional opinion. I have long stated that infectious disease pathogens, and chronic disease issues as well, simply do not care who we vote for, what we look like, how much money we have, or what our cultural foundations are. Pathogens simply exist to infect, amplify, cause harm or death, and move on to its next host. Politicization diminishes an agency’s technical credibility and operational capacity—costing lives, degrading preparedness, and making future responses more difficult. Safeguarding scientific integrity, transparent communication, and independent expert review is essential to prevent these harms.

We should all collectively be working to support community public health because it is in our common good as humans. Without that support, we will continue to see eroding public trust which reduces the public's willingness to follow health guidance and can lead to weaker compliance with NPIs and lower vaccine uptake. We will watch worse health outcomes and slower epidemic control. Lower vaccination and slower responses translate into more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. There will be ongoing weakened scientific integrity and decision making. Political interference can sideline evidence, degrade guidance quality, and disrupt routine agency functions. Our current and future college majors will witness damage to the public health workforce and institutions as increased threats, staff departures, and loss of institutional expertise undermine preparedness. Finally, the global consequences will reveal widening health inequities and politicized access to resources.

HPN: Will these fractures influence infection prevention efforts across the country?

Rohde: The politicization of public health, research, healthcare, and subject matter expertise not only damages institutional credibility, but it directly impairs infection prevention, increases the likelihood of future outbreaks, and widens disparities in health outcomes. Restoring trust, scientific consistency, and interagency collaboration is critical to rebuilding a resilient national infection prevention infrastructure. When public health agencies and scientific institutions become politicized, the resulting erosion of trust and coordination directly undermines infection prevention at every level of the system.

The key effects will be a reduction in public adherence to prevention measures like we are currently witnessing in vaccine hesitancy. There will be inconsistent implementation of infection control standards and measures across jurisdictions. We are already seeing this impact with "public health alliances" in various regions of the U.S. With any natural disaster or health emergency, we need one trusted voice to reduce confusion and panic. Weakened surveillance and early detection can result in delayed data sharing and response coordination. Our public health and healthcare workforce, already at dangerously low staffing levels, will continue to face burnout, threats, and attrition due to being questioned by non-experts.

Finally, there will be an erosion of cross-sector partnerships. Early and effective infection prevention depends on trust among healthcare systems, laboratories, and public health authorities.

HPN: How can clinicians, hospitals, and health systems build trust with their patients in the wake of this confusion?

Rohde: Clinicians, hospitals, and health systems play a frontline role in restoring trust and reinforcing evidence-based infection prevention and health communication. Trust is built not through messaging alone, but through transparency, consistency, and authentic community engagement.

I would recommend a strategic initiative built on the following pillars:

• Communicate clearly, consistently, and locally.
• Show transparency in decision making.
• Empower clinicians as trusted messengers.
• Engage communities beyond the clinic.
• Model integrity and accountability.
• Invest in workforce education and communication training.

Restoring trust requires relationships, not just responses. When clinicians and health systems communicate with transparency, empathy, and scientific clarity, especially during uncertainty, they become stabilizing forces in an environment where public confidence has been shaken. Trust, once rebuilt, strengthens every facet of infection prevention and public health resilience.

HPN: What areas will be most affected by a fractured public health landscape?

Rohde: A fragmented public health system weakens the nation’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to health threats. The impacts extend across multiple domains—operational, social, and scientific—with cascading effects on community health and national security. The most significant areas threatened in my professional opinion are: Infectious disease surveillance and response; healthcare, public health, and medical laboratory workforces; health communication and trust; rural and underserved communities; chronic disease prevention and community health programs; and research and data modernization and innovation.¹

HPN: Where can people go for reliable public health information these days?

Rohde: Identifying trusted, evidence-based sources of public health information is essential. Reliable information must come from organizations grounded in science, transparency, and peer-reviewed data rather than opinion or ideology. The primary sources I utilize and trust are:

• Federal and global health agencies.
• State and local health departments.
• Academic and professional organizations.
• Academic health institutions and trusted experts.
• Science-based media outlets.

I often implore my family, friends, and colleagues to “trust the data, not the drama” as well as remind them that “expertise still matters.”

HPN: Where do you see this situation going from here?

Rohde: It's always tough to predict the future with so many changing variables. The path forward will depend on whether leaders, institutions, and communities choose to rebuild trust through science, transparency, and collaboration, or continue down a trajectory of division and misinformation.

If current fractures persist, the U.S. risks a continued erosion of public trust, inconsistent public health responses, and widening inequities in health outcomes. Routine prevention measures—such as vaccination, surveillance, and antimicrobial stewardship—could weaken further, making the nation less resilient to emerging threats. The public health workforce and healthcare workforce such as medical laboratory, physicians, nursing, and infection prevention are already stretched, and may continue to lose talent and morale.

However, there is also a window of opportunity. The challenges of recent years have elevated public health in national consciousness, revealing both its fragility and its indispensability. With leadership, sustained investment, and renewed commitment to science communication, the U.S. can modernize its public health infrastructure and restore confidence in its institutions. We all must support policies and people who are committed to depoliticizing public health and healthcare, rebuilding our workforce capacity in these areas, modernizing our data systems, reinforcing our community engagement, and promoting accurate health literacy.

HPN: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Rohde: One of my go to statements is "Public health, healthcare, research, and expertise matter all the time to everyone." Public health without trust is just data on a piece of paper. Everyone must realize that science does not take sides. We should listen to our grandparents who understand the critical lifesaving value of our past scientific innovation and discovery that has saved millions of lives like clean drinking water, hand hygiene, vaccines, antimicrobials and antibiotics, and other measures. Our society has grown a bit spoiled by taking these things for granted and the microbes are just waiting for us to become lazy and uninformed. Confusion is contagious too, but public health is the antidote.

Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden

HPN also able spoke with former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, who is now the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a non-profit organization whose mission is to prevent 100 million cardiovascular disease deaths by 2050.

HPN asked him what measures need to be taken in the wake of these developments.

Dr. Frieden: We need to block damage, patch gaps, and begin to build faster, more responsive health and public health systems. First, protect what protects us like disease tracking, labs, vaccination, outbreak response, and action to address the leading causes of disease, disability, and death.

Second, fill gaps to the extent possible by pooling resources, coordinating, learning lessons, and collaborating for learning and efficiency. This is an important role for multi-state coalitions.

Third, start creating a modern public health that is quicker to find threats and act on them, better at listening and communicating, linked closely with primary care and grounded in strong partnerships, and focused on delivering results people can see, including cleaner water and air, healthier food, fewer asthma attacks, quicker control of outbreaks and more accessible and effective primary health care.