The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines, amid growing turmoil at the nation’s top public health agency under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr.
In a joint press release, Governors Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Bob Ferguson of Washington said the CDC had become a “political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science”.
“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the Democratic governors said in a joint statement, adding: “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”
The move comes days after the White House forced out the newly confirmed director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, who had clashed with Kennedy, Trump’s secretary of the US health and human services department (HHS), over his efforts to reshape federal vaccine policies in ways that contradict established scientific research. Her firing, just weeks after her confirmation, prompted several senior officials to resign in protest and has led to rising calls from lawmakers, scientists and former agency employees for Kennedy to step down. Monarez was replaced by a Trump loyalist with no medical or scientific background.
He argued that the organization’s “dysfunction” was responsible for “irrational policy” during the Covid pandemic, leading to a disproportionately large number of deaths recorded in the US compared with the global average.
In a statement, an HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon, blamed Democrats’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic for undermining public trust in vaccine policy, and said federal immunization recommendations would continue to be “based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic”.
“Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the Covid era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies,” he said.
The newly formed West Coast Health Alliance will coordinate health guidance across the three states, including evidence-based immunization recommendations. Officials say the effort is intended to provide residents with access to consistent and credible information about vaccines in the absence of reliable federal leadership.
According to the announcement, the alliance will release a set of shared principles in the coming weeks. While the states will share immunization recommendations, they will also pursue independent strategies based on their “unique laws, geographies, histories, and peoples” and with respect to Tribal sovereignty.
The three states registered their concern over Kennedy’s leadership in June, when they jointly condemned his abrupt removal of all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – a group long considered central to vaccine safety oversight. In announcing the new alliance, the governors said they were acting to protect the health of the tens of millions of residents across California, Oregon and Washington, pledging that public health guidance would be shaped by “science-driven decision-making”. Without consistent, evidence-based leadership from the federal government, they warned, the nation’s health security was increasingly at risk.
Their action comes on the same day as more than 1,000 past and present HHS employees published a letter calling for Kennedy’s resignation. It comes two days after nine former CDC officials wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Kennedy’s leadership, and ousting of Monarez, months after he appointed her, was “unacceptable” and “unlike anything we have ever seen”.
It also marks a stark departure from some Republican-led states that have moved to loosen – or eliminate entirely – certain vaccine mandates. On Wednesday, the Florida state surgeon general announced that children will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis. And earlier this summer, a new law took effect in Idaho removing the requirement for children to be vaccinated to attend schools in the state.
Public health officials in California, Oregon and Washington warned of an erosion of trust in vaccines.
“Our communities deserve clear and transparent communication about vaccines – communication grounded in science, not ideology,” Sejal Hathi, the director of the Oregon health authority, said in a statement. “Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives. But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most.”
