Several major Federal Health events postponed as Trump officials pause external communications at HHS

Updated January 22, 2025

Some of the downstream impact of the communications clamp-down is that several events with HHS participation were postponed. This includes the very popular AFCEA Health IT Summit, which was scheduled for next week, and the inaugural HHS Industry Summit, which was to be held on the NIH campus in mid-February.

Said AFCEA as part of its announcement, “AFCEA Bethesda has postponed Health IT Summit 2025 due to the majority of speakers withdrawing their participation in the event. Federal health agencies have been instructed to pause all external communications, so in the best interest of our sponsors and attendees we have decided to postpone next week’s event until a later date in 2025 … We will be rescheduling the Health IT Summit for later in the year, when government speakers can participate fully and bring attendees the most current information about Health IT under the new administration.”

This broad communications pause appears to be isolated to HHS at this time and it is expected to be a temporary pause to allow new agency leadership to review communications efforts and to define a comprehensive strategy.

For now, if you are planning to attend an event where an HHS (FDA, CMS, HHS, NIH, etc) speaker is scheduled, make sure to check status before you take the trip.

Added January 21, 2025

“The Trump administration has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the matter.

The instructions were delivered Tuesday to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, one day after the new administration took office, according to the people with knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations…” Read The Full Article Here

Source: Washington Post, Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond and Rachel Roubein

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