Withdrawal of the United States from the WHO — How President Trump Is Weakening Public Health

This Perspective critiques the Trump administration’s 2025 executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) and halt funding and collaboration. The authors emphasize how this move threatens domestic and global health by destabilizing outbreak response infrastructure, pausing technical partnerships, and weakening U.S. engagement in coordinated responses to emerging health crises like avian influenza and Ebola. The CDC’s collaboration with WHO on influenza surveillance, polio eradication, HIV/AIDS, and other campaigns is cited as vital and now disrupted. While framed by the administration as a rebuke of WHO’s pandemic response, the authors argue the withdrawal harms U.S. interests more than it advances reform. The article calls for public health professionals to advocate for reversing the decision and maintaining U.S. leadership in global health cooperation

This Perspective critiques the Trump administration’s 2025 executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) and halt funding and collaboration. The authors emphasize how this move threatens domestic and global health by destabilizing outbreak response infrastructure, pausing technical partnerships, and weakening U.S. engagement in coordinated responses to emerging health crises like avian influenza and Ebola. The CDC’s collaboration with WHO on influenza surveillance, polio eradication, HIV/AIDS, and other campaigns is cited as vital and now disrupted. While framed by the administration as a rebuke of WHO’s pandemic response, the authors argue the withdrawal harms U.S. interests more than it advances reform. The article calls for public health professionals to advocate for reversing the decision and maintaining U.S. leadership in global health cooperation