Public health icon Dr. William Foege passed away on Jan. 24, 2026, at the age of 89; the renowned epidemiologist is credited with leading the fight in eradicating smallpox, which last had a naturally occurring case and death in 1977.
The triumph of the first infectious disease to be fully eradicated by humans cannot be understated, either — some estimate that over 300 million people died just in the 20th century from the disease, which left countless others with complications from scarring to blindness.
Foege’s career spanned stints as director the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) across Republican and Democratic administrations, executive director of the Carter Center and as Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.
Just days before his passing, the U.S. officially pulled out of the World Health Organization (WHO), an intergovernmental organization branch of the United Nations headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, of which the U.S. has been a part for 78 years since 1948.
In a press release from the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. cited WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states,” as reasons for its departure.
The U.S. has not paid any of its dues for 2024 and 2025, according to ABC News, leaving $133 million in unpaid dues. The U.S. previously attempted to leave the WHO back in 2020, but the effort fell short.
The juxtaposition between a man whose career was dedicated to public health — someone for whom the WHO released a statement on his passing — and the United States’ current attitude towards international organizations and public health is sharp.
In a leaked letter in late 2020, Foege was critical of the then-Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. This past August, Foege penned an opinion piece that reiterated some of his frustration with the administration’s handling of the pandemic.
“With Covid, the Trump White House gave a different message. The president told the states to develop their own plans and compete for resources. Chaos was the result,” Foege wrote.
Beyond the pandemic, public health has been an ideological battleground in the current Trump administration. Early in year one of this administration, with Elon Musk’s DOGE in full swing, thousands of employees and contractors for the CDC and National Institute of Health (NIH) were fired as part of a broader effort to reduce the federal government workforce. Advocates argued the efforts were part of the president’s promise to weed out “waste, fraud and abuse” and save American taxpayers money, with some even citing a reduction in the federal workforce under the Clinton administration; critics argued that those reductions were far different in nature and not indiscriminate in the same way that DOGE cuts have been.
In addition to federal cuts to premier public health agencies like the aforementioned CDC and NIH, however, is the installation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a controversial figure who largely ran his own presidential bid on making the United States healthy again. Today, after dropping out and endorsing Trump on the campaign trail, RFK Jr. now serves as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, championing the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
That movement, along with the appointment of RFK Jr. himself, has caused many in the public health community to lack faith in the administration. In the written words of Foege himself in that same opinion piece:
“We thought public health was on a path toward healing when suddenly, in his second term, President Trump acquired the peculiar expertise of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He promotes raw milk, which can transmit pathogens; promotes the rotting of children’s teeth; and despite exhaustive testing that has shown vaccines don’t cause autism, clings to that belief for reasons that defy understanding,” Foege wrote. “Kennedy would be less hazardous if he decided to do cardiac surgery. Then he would kill people only one at a time, rather than his current ability to kill by the thousands. Why is it that killing a single person is seen as murder but killing masses is excused if you are a politician,” he added.
Suffice it to say, Foege was not a fan of the current administration’s appointment nor the rhetoric from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a department which oversees the NIH, FDA, CDC and others.
RFK Jr.’s HHS recently announced a change in federal guidelines of vaccinations for children, down from 17 to 11. Supporters of the effort said the change aligns with other developed nations, though that point is debated. It also comes at a time when vaccine hesitation and misinformation are high, with some pointing to mistrust in vaccines as causes of measles outbreaks in places like Texas last year and South Carolina this year. According to the WHO, most cases of recent years have been found in unvaccinated individuals, with “over 22 million children worldwide [who] did not receive their first dose of the vaccine in 2023.” In 2025, the U.S. saw 2,255 cases of the largely preventable disease. To date, the U.S. has seen 416 measles cases in 2026.
RFK Jr. has also been a notable champion of removing fluoride from drinking water, which he claims is linked to a number of diseases — another highly contested claim that critics argue is true only at high concentrations, not the levels in drinking water, which are there to strengthen teeth and prevent tooth decay.
Between a controversial pick to lead the nation’s top public health and medical research entities, that pick pushing forth claims that many experts regard as untrue or ill-informed, and what critics would call general anti-science rhetoric and decision-making, the U.S. departure from WHO is just another page in what those like Foege would likely call regression in American greatness.
Expert opinions can be wrong, even if propped up by a large consensus. The idea that what is “known” now cannot ever change would be, in actuality, in opposition to science itself, which welcomes new information. Moreover, RFK Jr. and others argue they do not take anti-science nor anti-vaccine stances, rather science-first approaches free of any political bias; they look to “restore public trust” in vaccines and medical advice, according to RFK Jr.’s own words.
But Foege, whose arguably greatest achievement in a storied career in global health was the eradication of smallpox, which was built on the ring vaccination technique, saw public health as pro-science, complete with global collaboration on science and vaccines to prevent and slow diseases through organizations like the WHO. Foege understood that public trust was globally earned, and that this very global community of science and medical practitioners, which was funded in a great deal by the U.S., would suffer from the withdrawal of the U.S. from the WHO.
There isn’t some sort of invisible wall that will block American scientists and personnel from collaborating with folks around the world. Nonprofits and other organizations can serve as those mediums for collaboration, just as they have in the wake of pulled USAID funding, for instance.
But between reduced funding via the cavity left by the U.S. from outstanding dues, to the broken global public trust that others around the world had in U.S. scientific and medical institutions, the U.S. may be surrendering another position on the world stage for short-term gains like prioritizing sensationalized claims over rigorously tested science. And perhaps more importantly, the U.S. may be losing its ability to do the most good with the science and innovations enabled by a global community of public health practitioners.
Foege saw science and public health as a way to promote social justice, a theme he highlighted in his book “House on Fire,” which was released in 2011. In a 2006 speech at a ceremony to unveil the new William H. Foege Building at the University of Washington, Foege summarized his remarks with how he believed science ought to be practiced.
“There is something better than science, and that is science with a moral compass. Science in the service of humanity, science that makes current deeds responsive to future needs,” Foege said.
How closely the country’s recent actions in the public health sector, both domestic and abroad, align with Foege’s vision depends on who is asked — though his authorship suggests he didn’t believe that RFK Jr. and his decisions were quite in tune.
But the core of the message of science with a moral compass is one worth striving for, regardless of political affiliations, and one that the U.S. must lead by example by fostering global collaboration, official WHO participation or not.
Read more about Foege and his work in Maria Saporta’s column.
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