951 - Dr. Debra Houry on Her Decision to Leave the CDC
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Last week, Dr. Debra Houry was testifying before Congress. Today, she's talking with Dr. Josh Sharfstein on Public Health On Call. In this episode: Dr. Houry reflects on her time at the CDC, the drastic changes at the agency under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and what she hopes her testimony can do to uphold quality public health.
Guest:
Dr. Debra Houry, MPH, most recently served as the Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at the CDC. She has also worked as a professor at both the Emory University School of Medicine and the Rollins School of Public Health, and as an emergency department physician.
Host:
Dr. Josh Sharfstein is distinguished professor of the practice in Health Policy and Management, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.
Show links and related content:
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Testimony from Debra Houry, M.D., M.P.H.—Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
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Senior CDC officials resign after Monarez ouster, cite concerns over scientific independence—CBS News
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A Brief Update: CDC in Crisis—Public Health On Call (September 2025)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh. |
| 0:21.6 | Jh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:30.9 | Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:33.7 | Today, former CDC leader, Dr. Deb Howery joins Public Health On Call. |
| 0:39.0 | She talks with Dr. Josh Sharstein about her career at the agency, what drove her to resign publicly, her testimony before Congress, and what comes next. |
| 0:48.6 | Let's listen. |
| 0:49.8 | Dr. Deb, Howary, thank you so much for joining me this morning in public health on call. |
| 0:54.5 | It's been quite a week for you. How are you doing? |
| 0:57.1 | I'm doing okay. Thank you. You know, it certainly has been a change in schedule and really having a platform, |
| 1:03.3 | but I've appreciated all the engagement with the public health community during this time. |
| 1:07.7 | So let's roll the clock back a little bit. Tell me about when you first got to CDC. |
| 1:12.6 | So I got to CDC almost 11 years ago now. I had been a tenured faculty member at Emory and an |
| 1:19.6 | ER doc and doing public health research and teaching. And the opportunity to lead the CDC's |
| 1:24.3 | injury center was so exciting to me because it was taking a lot of the programs |
| 1:28.1 | and topics I was really passionate about and having the national scale to really impact communities. |
| 1:33.3 | And so I just really jumped at that chance and was there for about seven years leading the injury center. |
| 1:39.1 | And tell me something from your tenure there. |
| 1:41.7 | When I first got there, we actually had among the lowest morale in the |
| 1:45.5 | agency, and it was a small center. Everybody called it like the little engine that could, but we focused |
... |
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