CDC Director Mandy Cohen says data plays a key role in protecting health

IIn the spring of 2020, as Covid-19 was sweeping the globe, Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, was heading the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. One of the challenges she and her team faced was the outdated state of data that is ubiquitous in public health and medicine. “One of the first things we had to do was stop receiving laboratory data by fax,” Cohen told the conference Milken Institute 2024 global conferencewhere she spoke Monday with the institute’s president, Michael Milken.

“YEP. Embarrassing,” she continued, as the audience murmured in surprise. Early in the pandemicCohen acknowledged her state’s lack of comprehensive data as a major barrier to the response, as well as the lack of data interoperability. On Milken’s podium, she pointed to that experience when discussing her intention to improve the CDC’s data capabilities as director, a position she has held since July 2023.

“A lot has been invested, but we must continue. So we are really focused this year on getting more electronic case reporting,” Cohen said. “This allows for faster identification of those health threats. And we can do it. The technology exists. We just have to use it.”

That perspective is especially relevant as Cohen leads the CDC in the face of another potential public health threat, a widespread domestic outbreak of bird flu in cows. “I’ve spent a lot of time on bird flu in recent weeks,” says Cohen. “We need core capabilities to respond to these health threats.”

But Cohen and Milken did not discuss the CDC’s role in monitoring the ongoing spread of the H5N1 flu virus among dairy cattle — and dairy farm workers — in the U.S., which the director of the CDC’s influenza division has said is currently a low risk to the general public. . Milken did not ask follow-up questions about the handling of the outbreak, including the slow release of domestic data on the spread and sequence of the virus.

More broadly, however, Cohen called on Congress to give the CDC more resources and authority to build data processing capacity. “Data is absolutely critical if we are to protect the health of this country,” she said, specifically noting the need for better data-sharing capabilities. International supervision is also crucial. “Back to bird flu, right? We are looking for genetic changes in viruses around the world,” she said. “We want to be able to identify it and stop it at the source.”

In addition to outbreak data, the agency is exploring ways to monitor social media conversations to more quickly identify crises as they occur at the community level, before surveillance can detect them.

But Cohen also called on the private sector — whose leaders filled the audience at the Milken Institute meeting in Los Angeles — to play a role in public health. “Businesses obviously want to have a healthy workforce that’s productive, and so they’re thinking about the health and well-being of them, especially if you’re a large employer and you have insurance, then it’s dollars and cents,” she says. said. “A healthier workforce means more money you can use for other parts of your business.”

For this, she said, companies must promote vaccination – she noted vaccinations against the flu, Covid-19 and RSV for children – and ensure the mental health of employees. And more broadly, Cohen called on companies to advocate for the importance of public health preparedness. “We can see how a virus can bring us to our knees in an instant,” she said. “And so, just as we must invest in the military to protect us, we must also invest in public health to protect us.”