http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/09/09/0910MESHcdcmorale.html
An exodus of key leaders and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has raised “great concern” among five of the six former directors who led the agency over the past 40 years.
Their concerns, expressed in a rare joint letter to current CDC Director Julie Gerberding, come amid growing staff complaints about whether her strategic shifts in the agency’s focus are putting public health at risk, according to interviews with current and former CDC officials and documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
bump?!!
wasn’t this someones tipping point (when the HCW, or in this case CDC personnel) quit? I think my ppf just went up at least a point!
This was in the NY Times as well. Another issue in retaining top talent is that, what a surprise, private industry pays a lot more than the gov’t. If you don’t like your job and are not rewarded well for it, of course you are going to leave.
An excerpt from the article posted 00:22:
And there is a specific distrust of Gerberding herself and the agency’s chief operations officer Bill Gimson, according to interviews with their supporters and detractors. That’s coupled with what some say is a climate of fear that discourages honest communication, and an effort to “spin” the official information disseminated to employees.
“They don’t trust Julie and Bill,” said Dr. Dixie Snider, who retired this summer after working in CDC’s Office of the Director for 13 years, including since 2004 as Gerberding’s Chief Science Officer. “It’s a reality that the leadership is aware of. I think everybody is just befuddled about how do you fix that.”
Trust issues range from a general lack of confidence that CDC’s leadership will “do the right thing” when faced with political pressure from Washington; to questions of whether the reorganization was motivated more by a desire for control and power than designed to fix anything that was broken; to a belief that official staff communications are designed more to burnish a public relations image than give employees the unvarnished truth, according to interviews.
I suspect you could find the same trend across multiple federal agencies, not just the CDC and FEMA. Pay isn’t the primary issue in a lot of cases; disillusionment is. It is bad timing, though. I’d like to know where people are going, not just that they are leaving.
Oh Joy, before I even have my coffee this morning- a lead story on Google News on why Bird Flu is so lethal, and now, mass exodus at the CDC. This is so not good. PPF up another point.
InKy — at 06:57
I’d like to know where they are going as well. Here’s just a guess; ut wouldn’t it be great if they were fed up with how ineffective the CDC is perceived at being, and were being hired in droves by the people who seem to actually be able to DO things on a country and world-wide basis — multi-national corporations?
Like maybe Hess and Mobil, and folks like that? Companies who might be seeing a reason, lately, to have someone on staff to advise them about the spread of infectious diseases? Just a thought.
Oh, and on a different thread, someone mentioned in one section of scientists alone, there’s been a loss of 77% — I wonder which group of scientists? Anyone know about that?
From revere’s post at Effect Measure:
The badly conceived and executed reorganization isn’t the only issue affecting morale. Gerberding has surrounded herself with yes-men and receives criticism badly. There is an air of intimidation and fear in the agency. She is not trusted and viewed by many in the agency as more interested in control and power than furthering the public health mission.
[snip]
We’ve worked with CDC scientific colleagues for decades and the people we worked with used to be some of the best in the business. The agency is now full of second and third raters and its competency in even simple programmatic matters, like designing a data collection system, is dreadful. They can’t even do paperwork right. And if you speak out about your concerns, the job security isn’t that good either. Like others, we watch in horror as the agency is being systematically destroyed just at the point in history when we need it most.
sounds like my CERT Team
I havent heard much about the specifics of the reorg in the news, but as a former personnel specialist with the feds, my guess is that a lot of them are “retiring” due to the reorgnization. If a new organization chart creates non-jobs (like Special Assistants, Deputies, Science Officers, Advisors, etc.) just to accommodate people management is trying to minimize, the employee gets the message pretty quickly, and if they can, they typically retire. They may or may not go on to private industry. Age and health are often factors there, unfortunately.
Both my father and brother (virologist and epidemiologist respectively) have little or no respect/confidence for CDC in its current state. My brother was offered a very good position there and declined. (He has worked with them quite a bit in the past as a liason for his current agency and knows what’s going on at the CDC). So this news is not surprising to me.
Here’s a link I found on Current Events posted by plainsnman to an interesting site:
It’s forum with comments by actual CDC employees or former employess. Pretty interesting.
Some excerpts:
Dr. Gerberding forced out the senior leadership of CDC for no other reason but to replace them with people beholden to her. Just as Dr. Gerberding was a newcomer to CDC with little public health experience and no obvious qualifications for the CDC directorship other than loyalty to the administration when she selected by the White House to lead the CDC, the people she has put into top management positions are, in general, less qualified for their positions than those they replaced; they owe jobs and their loyalty to Dr. Gerberding who chose them over better qualified individuals.
‘’Congratulations to the AJC for writing another article on CDC, but keep up the investigation. One should scrutinize the credentials (or lack thereof) of the Julie hires who have replaced the many departed, talented and experienced scientists and managers. Many of the “brain drain” people, as well as others, have ben replaced by inexperiened individuals — often with extremely high salaries (way above the usual goverment salary system.) Some senior managers have never even worked in public health; many others have never managed before — and it shows. These hires have had great impact on the large budget and programs they MIS-manage, and deeply affected those of us who try to work hard and do the right thing. We’re trying to hang in there, despite the poor morale, chaos, and lack of leadership and direction, but the ship is sinking fast.’‘
Thank you Alison Young and AJC! American Public needs (and deserves) to hear about the turmoil within CDC. It is public’s health that is at stake after all… Yet, I am curious what public will do about it. I wonder whether it will just be another good article chockful of truth, we read it, we say “Geeez… that sucks; just too bad” and go about our business as usual… Of course, until a huge public health crisis strikes where CDC fails the American public - just like FEMA
Yes, at CDC we attend endless meetings, come up with drafts, drafts, and more drafts, then write lengthy justifications, so we can CYA appropriately. Everything looks good on paper, but in reality, we perform very little actual public health work. As Dr. Rick Goodman said in the AJC article, we get compensated handsomely, “we have good job security, health care benefits, and a pretty decent place to work, “as long as we go along with this and do not rock the boat. I wish I personally did not need a secure government job, so I didn’t have to put up with all this, but unfortunately I do!!!
Another problem is the practice of hiring and promoting targeted individuals… This is rampant within CDC. It is not important how knowlegeable one is, how good a scientist/professional he/she is. What matters is who one knows and how well-connected he/she is
Someone really needs to get the Comptroller General IG team here. Not the HHS IG they don’t want to fix the problems either. CDC wastes so much tax payer dollars its ridiculous. There are so many conflicts of interest at play that someone needs to be made an example of. Why are we hiring consultants to tell so-called qualified managers how to do their jobs? This really reeks of cronyism. We hire more management (management) consultants these days than ever. (Most are ex-CDC managers). I wonder if PGO was in on writing the ombudspersons contract and who their wrote it? That’s one Sole Source Justification everyone should see. It’s got to be some outstanding piece of work. Oops..that’s right…management there won’t have a clue either. Again, cronyism at work for your tax dollars. Out of all the professional experienced contract/grants managers in the federal government the best CDC can do is hire a CDC ex-finance person without any experience in contracts and grants. Unbelievable! By the way, Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) states the Director of Procurement and Grants should not report to in the chain of the Competition Advocate (CA). It’s a direct conflict of authority to make independent business decisions without fear of reprisals. Guess who the CDC CA is? Yeah, it’s time for change all right. Time to change and play above board and consider those who have the experience and credentials to make CDC the (Diamond) World Health Agency it should be before it’s too late.
Dr. Gerberding must get chest pain everytime she walks in the place. This is the second bad press article and now all the old dogs are howling at her. This website is like no other I’ve ever seen. It makes the grapevine (my works chatter) seem impotent, yet it’s right about a lot of changes. I’m betting she’ll resign before TGH.
Ugh.
Guess I’d better get away from the keyboard and get more stuff done around the house instead. Blah. (How can the CDC make me sick? Oh the irony…)
The AJC is on a mission. Kudos to them!
CDC bonuses go mostly to financial staff, administrative managers
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees receiving the most frequent large cash awards and performance bonuses are not scientists, but mostly budget analysts, accountants, computer experts and other administrative managers, according to an analysis of the awards by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As the CDC faces morale problems and the loss of key scientific leaders, the distribution of the Atlanta-based agency’s awards and bonuses provides evidence, critics say, that the agency is becoming more focused on agency management and bureaucracy and less on its public health mission.
[snip]
Low morale and an exodus of key leaders and scientists from CDC since 2004 has caused significant concern among several of the agency’s former directors and drawn the attention of a Congressional committee. The fear is that turmoil within the agency may be harming its ability to handle public health emergencies — from bioterrorism attacks, to an influenza pandemic to the toll of obesity, the Journal-Constitution reported last Sunday.
By the end of this year, all but two of the directors of CDC’s eight primary scientific centers will have left the agency. Other high-profile departures include world experts in several diseases.
The agency’s cash awards program is one tool in its arsenal that can be used to improve morale and stem departures. Yet the distribution of frequent large cash awards mainly to budget and administrative staff and managers, is an example of how the agency has become increasingly enamored with its non-scientific staff, said three current CDC employees, who declined to speak publicly for this article. Last year a CDC poll of its employees, called Pulse Check, found that one of their top concerns was the “loss of public health focus/mission in exchange for inappropriate business focus.”
Sounds like you’re doing a great job Julie!
LOL!!!
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