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DPH members Teri Mills and Donna Gaffney, also cofounders of Grandparents for Vaccines, write, "As grandparents... we expected to worry about school performance, scraped knees, first heartbreaks and whether our grandchildren were getting enough sleep. We never expected to worry that diseases we thought were gone might come roaring into their lives — yet here we are."

DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs spoke to WBAI-FM in New York City about the growing spread of measles in the U.S., including at an ICE prison camp, and how administration policies, including HHS Secretary Kennedy's resistance to vaccination, are helping this easily preventable but highly contagious disease to spread.

Amid reports of a measles outbreak at an ICE detention camp in Texas, DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs discusses the disturbing public health implications of the ongoing ICE operations to round up and imprison large numbers of immigrants. She notes that ICE's health branch has recently rewritten its mission statement to delete a pledge to provide the best possible healthcare. Her segment begins at about 22:50.

In a column nationally syndicated via our friends at The Progressive (and appearing so far in 2 dozen papers nationwide, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Charlotte Observer) , DPH members Susana Fried and Alicia Ely Yamin lay out the consequences of the administration's expanded Global Gag Rule. They write that it "will threaten the lives of people around the world, especially women and people who don’t fit into the administration’s narrow, unscientific categories of gender."

In an article reviewing ACIP Chair Kirk Milhoan's recent, bizarre comments about vaccine recommendations, DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs explains that Milhoan “wants to experiment on the people of the United States by seeing what happens as vaccination coverage plummets and infectious diseases spread,” adding, “This is so dangerous as to approach criminality.”

DPH members Donna A. Gaffney and Teri Mills, also co-founders of Grandparents for Vaccines, argue that RFK Jr. threatens to take us back to pre-vaccine days when infectious diseases that we now prevent ran rampant, comparing his approach to the smoke and mirrors used by the Wizard of Oz.

The Trump Administration has dramatically expanded the global gag rule, which limits countries receiving US aid from delivering abortion care, to also include prohibitions on gender-affirming care, support provided to transgender and nonbinary people, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The Administration has also expanded the scope of the policy by applying it to countries receiving humanitarian aid including food aid and disaster relief. Experts including Alicia Ely Yamin, co-chair of the Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Committee at Defend Public Health, weigh in on how this policy negatively impacts local control in health systems abroad and furthers public health crises already exacerbated by the Administration's cuts to US aid over the past year.

Coordinating Committee member Gregg Gonsalves writes about how Alex Pretti, killed by Customs and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, was part of a long tradition of healthcare workers standing up for human rights. Now, he argues, it's up to the rest of us to carry on Pretti's work.

On January 22, Kirk Milhoan, chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – installed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had previously purged the committee’s entire prior membership – made some truly bizarre statements that got largely buried in that week’s blizzard of insane news. CPH Coordinating Committee member Bruce Mirken explains the implications of his comments.