Seventy-five years of preparation for an outbreak like that of COVID-19—and yet, the CDC still failed to “reliably meet expectations” in addressing the crisis. That’s according to an August 2022 admission from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, President Joe Biden’s director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This admission was stunning, but it was also unavoidable. The agency needs work.

As Walensky conceded, it failed to provide the public and public health authorities with clear and consistent messaging, and it failed to coordinate effectively with other public health agencies. It also failed at collecting and disseminating relevant data in real time to state public health authorities and the public more broadly.

Worse, its school closure guidance and COVID-19 vaccine recommendations (especially for children) were both politicized and incompatible with emerging data and risk/benefit analyses.

Much of the agency’s failure was a direct consequence of decades of congressional inaction. Congress ignored the growing need to strengthen the agency’s public health capabilities and give it the abilities necessary to safeguard our nation’s health.

Even with the onset of COVID-19, the CDC was not the agency designated to lead in communicating daily with the nation. This was a big mistake.

The CDC cannot heal itself. But, by working with Congress, the Trump administration can fix the CDC, reorganizing its structure and refocusing its mission on its primary function: to detect, control, combat, and prevent communicable diseases.

This is an enormous task. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has outlined some initial steps toward this end, but certain additional steps will be necessary.

First, Congress should formally authorize the CDC in statute. The House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, among others, recommended that Congress clarify the CDC’s role and responsibility as the lead federal agency in controlling infectious disease.

At the same time, Congress should end bureaucratic duplication and “mission creep” by transferring certain CDC functions to other agencies within HHS that are better suited to execute them.

For example, the CDC’s health promotion and disease prevention activities should be transferred to the newly........

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