In September 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) indefinitely paused a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) infectious disease data project that would provide real-time information on 127 notifiable diseases.
The project, designed to be user-friendly and incorporate expert analysis, was put on hold after the team sought approval to launch it. Jennifer Layden, former head of the CDC's Office of Public Health Data, Science, and Technology, expressed frustration over the pause, emphasizing the importance of transparency in public health data. According to Layden, “[t]he project is just one example of the many challenges of the past several months. We lost a lot of staff and we couldn't rehire. Being able to be effective and do the work just became more and more challenging."