Ralph Abraham, No. 2 official at CDC, abruptly steps down

STAT News · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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The drama and chaos surrounding the leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have taken another twist, with the announcement Monday that the agency’s No. 2 official, Ralph Abraham, has resigned. A statement posted to the CDC’s website said Abraham, a former Louisiana surgeon general who was sworn in as the agency’s deputy secretary general only 2 1/2 months ago, stepped down to address “unforeseen family obligations.” The resignation is effective immediately. “It has been an honor to serve alongside the dedicated public health professionals at the CDC and to support the agency’s critical mission,” Abraham said in the statement. The CDC is theoretically being led by Jay Bhattacharya, who is also the director of the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya was named acting CDC director last week. But there is no expectation that the NIH director will be relocating to Atlanta or even spending significant amounts of time there. His predecessor, Jim O’Neill — who was also juggling two jobs, the other being the deputy health secretary — was also based in Washington. Abraham, who began the CDC job in early January after being sworn in in December, was actually physically present at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta. People familiar with the CDC’s operations believe the organization is being run by a group of political appointees in the office of the director, most of whom have no medical or public health experience. The CDC has only had a full-time director for four weeks in the current Trump administration. Susan Monarez, who briefly held that position, was fired late last August when she refused to agree to accept all vaccination policy recommendations from an advisory panel that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stacked with anti-vaccine figures.