NEW YORK—Kevin Griffis, who was the director of the Centers for Diseases Control's office of communications until he resigned in March, will receive one of our SABRE Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement at our annual ceremony in New York on May 6.

The award recognizes Griffis’ excetpional career in healthcare communications, as well as his decision to resign from the CDC rather than become part of the disinformation campaigns that the Trump administration is now spreading through the CDC and other government agencies.

Following his resignation, Griffis authored an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he explained his decision: “I left my job because I believe public health policy must always be guided by facts and not fantasy.”

He went on to concede that “America’s federal public health messaging has not always gotten everything right” but added that “ healthcare providers and the broader public could have confidence that recommendations were made after careful effort to understand and apply the best available science.”

But under the Trump administration, and Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr in particular “public health communications have slowed to a trickle” and “infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy’s preferred treatments.”

Griffis resignation was reminiscent of the heroic stand taken by Jerald ter Horst, who resigned as press secretary to President Ford after it became clear that he planned to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon. Griffis’ integrity stands in stark contrast to the cowardice on display from many members of the media, law firms, academia and corporate America in the current crisis.

Before his resignation, Griffis spearheaded the post-pandemic revitalization of communications at the agency, ushering in wide-ranging reforms to improve its reach and effectiveness.

Prior to CDC, he served as assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Health & Human Services, leading efforts to keep the American public informed during Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks and to highlight the impact of the Affordable Care Act on Americans' lives in its first few years of existence. At Planned Parenthood, he later worked as its top communicator to protect and preserve the law.

A former journalist, Kevin also held key communications roles on successful campaigns for Tim Kaine, Barack Obama and Cory Booker.