Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Major · Needs Congress

Split the CDC into two separate agencies

Not started

452 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“The CDC should be split into two separate entities housing its two distinct functions. … These distinct functions should be separated into two entirely separate agencies with a firewall between them.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The CDC has not been split. HHS's 2025 restructuring moved the other way: it consolidated 28 divisions into 15 and folded the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response into CDC, making the agency larger rather than separating its data-publishing and public-health-promotion functions behind a firewall. No statute, executive order or Federal Register reorganization notice divides the agency. The negative now rests on two dated in-window Primary documents rather than on a search alone (read 2026-09-03): CDC's own *Organization and Leadership* page, page-dated 2025-01-23, presents CDC as a single operating division of HHS with eleven Centers and Institute and nine Offices under one Director; and HHS's FY 2027 Agency Performance Plan and Report of April 2026 lists "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" once, as one operating division among the department's list. No firewall, no second agency.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Negative searches run 2026-08-27: Federal Register full-text “Administration for a Healthy America” since 2025-01-20 — 0 documents; among the notices and final rules we keep and search, HHS titles matching “Statement of Organization”, “Organization, Functions” or “Delegation” — 12 hits, covering the Office of the General Counsel, the Office of the Secretary and OCIO, ACF, CMS, ONC, OCR, AHRQ and FDA, none of them CDC and none splitting an agency. Among the presidential documents we keep and search, 277 executive orders in the window, none reorganizing CDC.
  • The HHS restructuring announcement of 2025-03-27 (https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-restructuring-doge.html and its fact sheet) is the document describing the ASPR-into-CDC move. Both refused to open for us when first tried and are recorded as leads; the event’s Evidence comes instead from CDC’s own organization page and the FY 2027 APPR, read on 2026-09-03.
  • Related, and logged separately: #1206 (Congress limiting CDC’s authorities) and #1208 (a stand-alone national epidemiological agency) are the other two Chapter 14 asks about CDC’s structure; all three are not started.
Action
other
Object
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
ID
1207