Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Law360 Healthcare Authority, in “Why the CDC May Look Very Different in Trump’s 2nd Term,” by Theresa Schliep. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
As the healthcare industry braces for significant policy changes under a second Trump administration, some experts say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could see the most significant alterations both in mission and structure, in part because of the agency's unique, and vulnerable, position under the law.
While it played a major role in the country's COVID-19 pandemic response and is seen as a model around the world, the CDC has a broad and in some ways unclear mission, at least in comparison to other federal health agencies.
Unlike the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which was created by the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, there is no statute expressly establishing the CDC, which instead derive most of its authority from Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act. That statute allows the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations to control the spread of communicable disease or enforce quarantines, a power that HHS delegated to CDC.
There are limits to what President-elect Donald Trump — and his appointed officials — will be able to do when it comes to the CDC. He likely could not, for instance, entirely eliminate public health interventions, according to Richard H. Hughes IV of Epstein Becker Green.
"But there's not a ton of specificity in that statute," Hughes said.
