USA: Physician group sues Trump admin to reverse agencies' health web page, data blackout

A physician advocacy group filed a lawsuit Tuesday against federal agencies over last week’s purge of health information web pages and public health data sets, which they said harms patient care and medical research.

The complaint, filed in the District of Columbia’s federal court by Doctors for America, outlines a “dangerous gap in the scientific data” that health experts use to spot disease outbreaks and better speak with their patients.

It lists the Office of Personnel Management, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services as defendants.

Last Friday, the agencies began scrubbing critical data and pages from their websites that were related to LGBTQIA+ issues to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to strike “gender ideology” from the federal government. Per a New York Times analysis, more than 8,000 pages were removed in total—including more than 3,000 from the CDC—alongside numerous online data sets.

Though some pages have come back online with a notice that they are being modified to comply with Trump’s order, other pages including those relating to the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, HIV data and recruiting underrepresented populations in clinical studies remain down as of Tuesday, per the complaint (PDF).

“For example, DFA members had relied daily on CDC webpages with guidelines on ‘PrEP for the Prevention of HIV Infection in the U.S.’ and ‘U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use,’” the group wrote in its complaint. “DFA members used those webpages, and other removed pages, to guide how they treat patients, particularly patients with other medical conditions that must be taken into account to safely recommend and prescribe treatment options.”

“Federal public health agencies must reinstate these resources in full to protect our patients,” Reshma Ramachandran, M.D., a member of the board of directors for DFA, said in a release.

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Source: Fierce Healthcare, 4 February 2025