Trump administration yanks CDC flu vaccine campaign

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stopping a successful flu vaccination campaign that juxtaposed images of wild animals, such as a lion, with cute counterparts, like a kitten, as an analogy for how immunization can help tame the flu.

A woman with a box of tissues blows her nose.
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The news was shared with staff during a meeting on Wednesday, according to two CDC staffers who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, and a recording reviewed by NPR.

During the meeting, leadership at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases told CDC staff that the Department of Health and Human Services had reviewed the campaign and advised that it would not continue.

The move comes during Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s first full week on the job as head of HHS.

The "Wild to Mild" flu vaccination campaign sought to encourage people to get the flu vaccine. In particular, the campaign aimed to communicate that flu vaccination can lessen symptoms and the chance of getting severely ill, even if it doesn't prevent someone from catching the flu.

The Trump administration's decision to pull the campaign comes in the midst of a brutal flu season that's still raging. More than 50,000 patients were admitted to hospitals for influenza during the week ending Feb. 8, the highest level in 15 years.

Paid media for the ad campaign was ending on Wednesday, according to one of the current CDC staff members who spoke to NPR.

On Wednesday, the webpages for the "Wild to Mild" vaccination campaign were entirely offline. On Thursday a link came back online, but it now directs to a webpage with older material, rather than the previous pages that contained shareable images from the 2024 campaign.

The CDC didn't respond to a request for comment.

In an email to NPR Thursday, Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for HHS, rejected the characterization of events: "Unfortunately, officials inside the CDC who are averse to Secretary Kennedy and President Trump's agenda seem to be intentionally falsifying and misrepresenting guidance they receive."

Paid media for the ad campaign was ending on Wednesday, according to one of the current CDC staff members who spoke to NPR. The website for the "Wild to Mild" vaccination campaign remained offline offline as of Thursday afternoon.

Requests for comment to the CDC were not immediately returned.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for HHS, rejected the characterization of events: "Unfortunately, officials inside the CDC who are averse to Secretary Kennedy and President Trump's agenda seem to be intentionally falsifying and misrepresenting guidance they receive," Nixon said in an email to NPR Thursday.

The campaign sought to "reset public expectations around what a flu vaccine can do in the event that it does not entirely prevent illness," according to the CDC's webpage describing the launch of the campaign in 2023. It was renewed for the current flu season.

"We found that it was very successful—people understood the message, [and] they were swayed by the message," Erin Burns, associate director for communications in the CDC's Influenza Division, told the trade website Fierce Pharma in October 2024.

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The campaign was a response to falling flu vaccination rates since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and targeted groups at higher risk, the CDC's launch webpage says, "especially pregnant women and children."

"The CDC campaign is a creative and effective way of conveying an extremely important public health message about 'partial protection' vs. 'complete prevention' of disease," Marla Dalton, executive director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told NPR in an email.

While it was primarily digital, the campaign also found a home in public transit over the fall. "Wild to Mild" branding was wrapped around trains in four major cities, and ads were featured at mass transit stations. According to a presentation from the CDC in November, those ads reached more than 30 million riders and generated another 30 million digital impressions by the end of October last year.

The flu vaccine is only 40 to 60% effective at preventing medically attended influenza. Last year it was only 41% effective.