WA helps create West Coast Health Alliance amid CDC’s ‘destruction’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- California, Oregon, and Washington launched a West Coast Health Alliance in 2025.
- Governors aim to counter CDC “politicization” with unified, science-backed policies.
- Alliance will issue regional vaccine guidance rooted in clinical research and expertise.
UPDATE: This story now includes that Hawaii announced Thursday that it is joining the West Coast Health Alliance.
Washington state is teaming up with its two West Coast counterparts to counteract what they view as the corrosion of the federal CDC, or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office on Wednesday morning, Sept. 3, announced the launch of a new “West Coast Health Alliance,” alongside Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Tina Kotek of Oregon. The alliance’s mission is simple: “to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.”
On Sept. 4, Hawaii announced it would also join the coalition.
“As an island state, we understand how critical it is to protect our communities from preventable disease,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, who is also a emergency room physician, said in a statement provided by Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office. “By joining the West Coast Health Alliance, we’re giving Hawaii’s people the same consistent, evidence-based guidance they can trust to keep their families and neighbors safe.
“Using science as our guiding star, Hawaii had the highest vaccination rate and lowest mortality rate of virtually any other state or region across the globe. This approach is critical as we all go forward into an era with severe threats from infectious diseases.”
A Sept. 3 news release says that the collaboration is a reaction to federal moves that have eroded the CDC’s independence; it also cited the federal administration’s “destruction” of the agency’s scientific integrity and credibility.
Washington, Oregon and California started the process to offer unified, evidence-based recommendations about who should get immunizations, according to the news release. The states aim to ensure the public receives credible information about vaccine efficacy and safety.
The news comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has reshaped the CDC, leading to a string of resignations, mass layoffs and significant shifts in vaccine policy. One recent shakeup, for example, came when CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired after she declined to resign.
Monarez had reportedly refused to approve vaccine recommendations pushed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic. For his part, Kennedy has said he wants to root out corruption and return trust to the CDC.
A joint statement from Ferguson, Newsom and Kotek states that Trump’s mass firing of the agency’s scientists and doctors — and “politicization” of the CDC — is a “direct assault on the health and safety of the American people.”
“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” the Democratic governors’ statement continues. “California, Oregon and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”
McClatchy has reached out to the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House seeking comment.
“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,” Andrew G. Nixon, HHS communications director, replied via email. “ACIP remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”
Underscoring the news is a surge of the new “Stratus” COVID variant across Washington state — including around Olympia — and nationwide.
Nine former CDC directors and acting directors this week opined in The New York Times that Kennedy’s actions surrounding the CDC are unlike anything they’d ever encountered, and far from anything that the U.S. has witnessed. Among their concerns: the upheaval among federal health workers, downplaying of vaccines, concentration on unproven treatments, and support of legislation projected to strip Medicaid coverage from millions of people, they wrote.
“We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security,” the former CDC leaders wrote.
Washington state Secretary of Health Dennis Worsham said in the Sept. 3 news release said the state will continue to ensure that science steers public-health policy. He said the alliance stands alongside medical organizations and professionals, with guidance grounded in clinical expertise and meticulous research.
“Our commitment is to the health and safety of our communities, protecting lives through prevention, and not yielding to unsubstantiated theories that dismiss decades of proven public health practice,” Worsham said.
The alliance will begin to coordinate public health guidelines by “aligning immunization recommendations informed by respected national medical organizations,” the news release says. Residents will in turn receive regular recommendations steeped in science, regardless of what’s happening at the federal level, the release says.
Earlier this summer, the three West Coast states decried Kennedy’s ousting of the 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
“The absence of consistent, science-based federal leadership poses a direct threat to our nation’s health security,” the news release says.
This story was originally published September 3, 2025 at 10:43 AM.
.jpg)