5 years in the past, on March 11, 2020, the World Well being Group declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a world pandemic. The novel coronavirus, dubbed SARS-CoV-2, started as a “cluster of severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause” reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It had unfold to 118,000 circumstances reported in 114 nations by March 11.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general on the time, stated in a media briefing that day that “the WHO is deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.” He urged leaders to maneuver rapidly to scale up their emergency responses, saying that “all countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”
Public well being companies just like the WHO and the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention performed vital roles all through the pandemic in coordinating with native well being departments to detect, hint and check for the virus. The WHO and CDC web sites acquired unprecedented site visitors as they grew to become invaluable go-to sources for probably the most up-to-date assets on technique of prevention, case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths. The Nationwide Institutes of Well being was instrumental in its growth of COVID-19 therapies and contributions to vaccine analysis.
Now, 5 years later, the Trump administration has minimize greater than 5,000 staff on the NIH and the CDC mixed, and is withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO.
On the identical time, the U.S. is going through outbreaks of tuberculosis, a resurgence of measles amongst unvaccinated communities, and the worst flu season in 15 years.
A lot of the work of the WHO, CDC and different public well being companies happens behind the scenes, solely often drawing public consideration. To place these roles into perspective, it may be useful to look at public well being earlier than these unifying entities existed.
In February 2025, the Trump administration laid off almost 1,300 CDC employees, or 10% of its workforce. A few of these firings have since been rescinded.
A spreading epidemic, gradual communications
Because the writer of the 2020 e book “Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory” and “Capturing COVID: Media & the Pandemic in the Digital Era,” revealed in 2025, I’ve extensively studied how public well being crises have unfolded. And thru my analysis as a well being communication scholar, I’ve analyzed the integral function of nonprofits and public companies in defending public well being.
Each the WHO and the CDC have been arrange within the Nineteen Forties. Earlier than a world and even nationwide community of public well being companies existed, there have been no coordinated communication means, exterior investigations or formalized methods of recording information throughout geographic areas. And not using a technique of sharing info, it was way more troublesome for outbreaks and epidemics to be linked between areas.
One notable instance was the 1918 influenza pandemic, a lethal mixture of influenza and pneumonia that first emerged in a Kansas military base within the spring of 1918. From there, the epidemic moved abroad, spreading all through Asia and Europe by late summer time. When it returned to the U.S. in August, the illness had been mislabeled the “Spanish flu.” The dearth of media protection of the spring outbreak, paired with the dearth of illness monitoring, meant that most individuals believed the deadly strains had begun in Europe.
Nobody formally tracked these outbreaks till the illness returned with American troops in August 1918. In September, the U.S. Surgeon Normal and the U.S. Public Well being Service tried to gauge the magnitude and transmission of influenza by sending telegrams to state well being officers.
The Sept. 27, 1918, subject of the official publication of the U.S. Surgeon Normal’s Workplace, one of many first experiences to give attention to the rising influenza epidemic.
Public Well being Studies
For instance, on the College of Kansas throughout the influenza pandemic, feminine professors cared for sick college students, school and employees, washed linens and ready meals. Since companies just like the WHO and CDC didn’t but exist and the world warfare additional impeded communication, little info was documented and shared throughout geographic areas, such because the sharing of knowledge on the right way to forestall the illness from spreading, doable therapies and even the variety of circumstances and deaths.
The influenza pandemic rapidly light within the public’s collective reminiscence, due partly to an absence of private narratives and follow-up tales after circumstances subsided – a minimum of till COVID-19 sparked renewed public curiosity within the 100-year-old disaster.
In 1918, at a Massachusetts hospital, many flu sufferers have been handled exterior in tents so they may get recent air.
Hulton Archive through Getty Pictures
Polio epidemic noticed a extra coordinated response
Beginning within the Nineteen Thirties, public well being responses to polio outbreaks demonstrated some great benefits of nationally coordinated efforts. The Nationwide Basis for Childish Paralysis helped battle polio via fundraising, working intensive campaigns to teach the general public, supporting scientific analysis and serving to victims from the acute hospital stage via rehabilitation. This effort was particularly obvious within the 1952 polio epidemic.
In the summertime of 1952, U.S. polio circumstances escalated, finally totaling 57,628 – greater than one-third of which included numerous phases of paralysis. All through the epidemic, the Nationwide Basis for Childish Paralysis coordinated with native chapters of its group. Collectively, the muse saved individuals knowledgeable of the rising epidemic, created emergency polio-focused hospital wings, recruited nurses and different well being professionals, and shared assets to the areas with outbreaks.
Widespread vaccination efforts led to a deep discount in polio circumstances within the U.S. by the Sixties, prompting the Nationwide Basis for Childish Paralysis to vary its title and mission to the March of Dimes. The group served as a mannequin for nonprofits and public well being companies for speaking and coordinating between native and nationwide entities.
Polio sufferers in iron lung machines at a Boston hospital in 1955.
Bettmann through Getty Pictures
The vital function of public well being companies
The CDC opened in 1946 as a small group based mostly in Atlanta, geared toward combating malaria within the U.S. Two years later, representatives from 53 nations ratified the structure of the WHO. This world entity introduced nations collectively throughout continents to deal with illness surveillance, prevention, remedy and analysis.
As these companies expanded into new areas of public well being over the Fifties and Sixties, they mirrored most of the approaches and techniques utilized by the Nationwide Basis for Childish Paralysis: monitoring and recording information public, educating the general public, investigating threats, aiding in moments of disaster and supporting scientific analysis. Collectively, the CDC and the WHO enormously improved public well being, from the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the decline of vaccine-preventable ailments to the event and implementation of HIV/AIDS therapies.
Previous to the COVID-19 pandemic, the roles of those companies usually didn’t garner a lot consideration, as area brokers traveled to look at one thing as routine as salmonella or as scary as hemorrhagic fever circumstances.
COVID-19 sufferers await entrance to a New York Metropolis hospital in April 2020, shortly after the beginning of the pandemic.
John Moore through Getty Pictures
Whereas public opinions of the CDC and the WHO shifted all through the COVID-19 pandemic, latest survey outcomes point out that almost all of People belief public well being companies a minimum of to some extent. A 2024 survey discovered that almost 60% of American adults imagine that the U.S. benefited from its WHO membership.
Sadly, when infectious ailments transfer out of the highlight and are seen as much less pressing, the vital roles of those public well being companies fade into the distant collective reminiscence, very like the 1918 and COVID-19 pandemics. Individuals quickly sufficient neglect the necessity for ongoing scientific analysis, instructional packages and groups that may rapidly reply to native, nationwide and worldwide ranges.
Illness continues to be a menace, because the outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis, influenza and different pathogens remind us. Individuals are nonetheless sick or dying of COVID-19: As of March 1, 6,725 individuals had died within the U.S. from COVID-19 simply in 2025, and almost 7.1 million have died worldwide since January 2020.
With out sturdy, coordinated efforts between public well being companies, even small well being calamities can escalate into full-blown epidemics and even pandemics, which the world will likely be far much less ready to deal with.