[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We are honored once again to be joined by Dr. Richard Besser, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, also formerly served as the Acting Director of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control.

Dr. Besser, as always, it's an honor, thank you.

- Thanks, Steve.

It's really great to be here.

- Yeah, let's get into this.

We'll put up the website for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a longtime underwriter of our public health programming.

There are so many areas to cover, but I'm gonna ask you right now as we are in the summer of 2025, this will be seen later.

The most pressing public health issues in our state and nation right now are?

- You know, that's a tough one.

- I know it's too broad.

Let me ask you this.

Is it the misinformation coming from certain credible sources in government on the federal level as it relates to public health and information that's needed, is that one of the most pressing?

- I mean, it is.

That is clearly one of the most pressing.

This is an unprecedented time in that we have a Secretary of Health who has done more than just about anyone in our nation to instill a lack of trust in our vaccine system.

And when you have someone in such an important, critical health position in our government, they have the opportunity to do incredible amounts of harm.

And this secretary, in the short time that he has been in office, has done just that.

Dismantling our public health system, undermining trust in our vaccine system, that is something we've never faced before, and how we address that will be critically important for the lives of people across our nation.

- We're engaged in an initiative, a public health awareness initiative, simply called, Vaccines, What You Need to Know.

We're driving people to the New Jersey Department of Health website, which has a very specific and very useful section on vaccines.

- Dr. Besser, you serve at the highest levels in our federal government.

You head a major foundation right now.

You are a pediatrician, clinically, in your background.

Tell folks what you believe to be the most tangible, relevant concerns as it relates to misinformation on vaccines coming out of Washington right now, particularly as it relates to small children, babies, small children.

- Yeah, you know, we have had what has been considered the gold standard system for approving new vaccines, for considering the impacts of existing vaccines, for making recommendations to healthcare providers and through them to their patients.

It has been the best system in the world, that is no longer the case.

And so, you know, I practiced pediatrics for more than 30 years in community clinics around the country and I looked to the Centers for Disease Control to provide me with the best information to share with my patients so they could make the best decisions for the health of their children.

The CDC recommendations came to them from an advisory committee, an incredible advisory committee.

It's called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

But it's made up of people with deep expertise in vaccines, in children's health, in the health of the elderly, of adults, of pregnant women, there's community representative on there.

And so as a pediatrician, I could pay attention to the discussions and the debates that they would have around new vaccines.

And so when a recommendation came forward, I would feel comfortable in understanding what went into the decision and in providing information to my patients.

We've already seen with this secretary, a new way of doing business.

He issued, on a short video, new recommendations around COVID vaccination that said pregnant women should not get the COVID vaccine and children without medical conditions should not get the COVID vaccine.

No information provided in that video in terms of who provided the recommendation to him, given that he is not a health professional.

What went into that?

What were the concerns that were being lifted up?

How were those addressed to come up with that recommendation?

So you had this recommendation.

He was flanked by the head of the National Institutes of Health, the head of the Food and Drug Administration.

No one from CDC was even there.

And so as someone who really knows the process by which this should go through, to me it was no different than any other video on TikTok or YouTube.

It didn't provide me with what I would need.

- When the head of health on the federal government end says we need to do more, quote, "research" to determine whether vaccines, let's be more specific, the MMR vaccine, potentially causes autism.

You say what to that?

- I say that is a question that was raised, studied, and answered many times over.

And simply by raising that as an unanswered question again, it raises concerns to parents of children as to whether they should get their child vaccinated.

What I say to those parents is talk to your doctor.

Talk to your child's doctor.

It's so important to establish a relationship with a healthcare professional who you trust, your child's doctor, their nurse, their nurse practitioner, your pharmacist, someone who you feel comfortable asking questions to, who can wade through all of the information, misinformation and disinformation that's coming out to help you make those decisions.

I think it's great that you're steering people to the New Jersey Department of Health website.

- It's up.

I'm sorry.

It's up right now as you're speaking.

Go ahead.

- Yeah, you know, I used to steer people to the CDC website and you know, it absolutely breaks my heart that that's something I can't feel comfortable doing anymore.

As we see experts from CDC leaving, experts speaking out about how their data and studies that they've been involved in are being used and misused.

You know, hopefully you will be able to find through your healthcare provider, sites like the New Jersey website that are up to date that can give you the information you need.

And I think we're gonna see medical societies, the Academy of Pediatrics, of which I'm a member, providing the kind of information and guidance that had been coming from the federal government.

- And also, let me be clear, Dr. Besser was referring to this advisory council of pediatricians, experts on infectious disease, vaccines, they were all removed.

- Yeah, they were all removed without cause.

They were accused of bias.

And you know, something very hurtful and harmful to them.

You know, these are individuals who were serving their country.

This is not a job where you're paid a lot of money.

You're paid for the time that you spend at those meetings.

But it was viewed as a real honor because of the vetting process that you had to go through to get selected.

You were only selected if you had the kind of deep understanding and knowledge to be able to look at the data, look at the studies, and provide that kind of information.

And it was an incredibly transparent process.

All of the committee hearings were live streamed.

The information was up there.

You could hear the debate going on.

It was the definition of transparent.

And during COVID, when we were all hunkered down, I watched those hearings to see what was going on in the discussions around COVID vaccination, how they dealt with any signals for any safety concerns, how they assessed whether the vaccines were working and who should get them, and it gave me real confidence to go on the air and talk about who should get vaccines, to talk to my patients about who should get vaccines.

But now, to have a committee, the committee that the secretary put in has quite a number of people there who are voices against vaccines, who really question the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.

And there's no public health intervention in my lifetime or in the past a hundred years that has had more benefit than vaccines, and you know, making sure that children and adults are vaccinated fully and on time.

- That's Dr. Richard Besser, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the former head of the CDC, and formerly, in a different life, on behalf of ABC News, Medical and Health Editor.

And we'll talk in a different segment with Dr. Besser about the role of the media, what we need to do to help people better understand what they need to understand, not with a point of view, but science-based.

Thank you Dr. Besser, we appreciate it.

- Thanks so much, Steve.

Real pleasure.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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