CDC webpages on sexual, gender identity, health equity removed

More than a dozen pages on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website related to sexual and gender identity, health equity, and other topics have been taken down, CNBC has learned. 

The CDC received a directive from the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the agency, to remove certain webpages by the end of the day Sept. 19, according to an internal CDC email viewed by CNBC, which was sent that day to some employees whose work is related to the pages.

The pages include one about sexually transmitted infections and gay men, another about healthy equity for people with disabilities, and additional fact sheets on asexuality and bisexuality. Some health equity advocates say removing such resources could create gaps in access to critical health information, especially for marginalized groups, and undermine efforts to promote equitable care.

The removal of “critical materials from trusted government resources endangers the health of patients and the public,” a spokesperson for the LBGT PA Caucus, a nonprofit promoting LGBTQ+ health-care equity, said in a statement.

“Stripping away resources on gender identity does not erase the need, it only erodes trust, creates confusion, and places patients at greater risk,” the spokesperson said. “Clinicians and the communities they serve rely on accessible, accurate, and inclusive guidance to deliver safe and effective care.”

The email did not provide details on why HHS directed the CDC to remove the pages or why it targeted certain topics. But the topics of some of the resources taken down are longtime targets of the Trump administration, which has issued a series of executive actions that limit transgender and nonbinary people’s rights and rolled back efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion. 

In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said the “CDC continues to align their website with Administration priorities and Executive Orders.” The CDC directed CNBC to HHS for comment.

It’s not the first time that the administration has targeted health resources on federal agency websites.

Thousands of pages across websites for the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, among other agencies, were abruptly pulled down beginning in late January under President Donald Trump’s executive order barring references to gender identity in federal policies and documents. In February, a federal judge ordered HHS, the CDC and FDA to temporarily restore public access to the pages while litigation moves forward. 

That same judge ruled in July that the government unlawfully ordered the mass removal of health resources from federal sites and required agencies to review and restore the affected pages. Following that ruling, the Trump administration reported to the court on Sept. 19 that most agencies have finished restoring the pages, with 185 back in compliance and only 11 CDC pages still under review, according to court documents. It is unclear how many of the pages taken down this month were at issue in the lawsuit.

It is unclear which pages were still under review as of Sept. 19, and why the CDC took down more pages on that same day following the ruling.

Attached to the internal CDC email was a spreadsheet of more than a dozen pages that the agency said had been taken down as of Sept. 19. A separate spreadsheet compiled by agency employees and viewed by CNBC included an additional site that appears to be offline.

CNBC verified that the following pages are now offline. The digital archive site Wayback Machine also shows when they were last active. Several pages were online as recently as early September, according to Wayback Machine, but it is unclear when the CDC officially removed all of them. 

Some pages listed on the spreadsheet attached to the internal CDC email are still online. That includes a page that monitors laboratory-confirmed hospitalizations among children and adults associated with respiratory syncytial virus.