Global jobs at CDC go unfulfilled

ATLANTA — Facing a tangled bureaucracy and a lack of qualified staff, nearly half of the overseas jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are vacant despite an urgent need to guard against foreign health threats. Many of the jobs will remain unfilled for another year, according to an internal CDC memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"This is a critical time for global health," wrote Dr. Stephen Blount, director of the CDC's Coordinating Office for Global Health, in an April 13 memo to CDC Director Julie Gerberding. The potential of an influenza pandemic, the current HIV/AIDS pandemic and the threat of a bioterrorist attack from abroad "fuels the urgency to make overseas assignments in a timely manner," he wrote.

Only 166 of the CDC's 304 overseas positions in 53 countries are filled, according to the memo. At least 85 positions likely will remain unfilled until 2008, Blount said. Among the causes he cited: Delays at a federal human resource center in Atlanta and an additional bureaucratic layer that requires CDC foreign postings be approved by a senior political appointee's office in Washington.

CDC job postings include openings in China and Indonesia — locations where outbreaks of the H5N1 avian influenza virus have caused significant concern.

Blount was in China and unavailable for comment.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said global health is a top priority, that the agency is doing everything it can to deploy staff and that progress is being made.

Backlogs at the Atlanta human resources center for the CDC's parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have contributed to the vacancy of about 800 of the CDC's 9,000 positions, Skinner said.

Agency officials say they are acting to help streamline that process.

"Federal employment in general takes time. On the average it can take several months," Skinner said. "And filling overseas positions presents unique challenges."

One of those unique challenges, according to Blount's eight-page memo, is the CDC must request special approval for every overseas assignment from the HHS Office of Global Health Affairs. This adds an additional two to three months of delay in hiring staff for foreign postings, according to the memo. "Some positions have been delayed for so many months that our partners doubt our commitment and credibility," Blount wrote.

William Steiger, director of HHS' Office of Global Health Affairs, was out of the country and unavailable for comment, said spokesman Bill Hall. Steiger has come under fire in the past for allegedly micromanaging the overseas work of the department's scientific divisions. Steiger, the godson of former President George H.W. Bush, is President George W. Bush's nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Mozambique.

Hall did not respond to requests for other department officials to explain the hiring policies.

Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, questioned why HHS officials in Washington are contributing to the CDC's hiring delays. "CDC isn't sending political people abroad to do global disease detection. They're sending scientists," said Levi, whose Washington-based group examines public health preparedness.

Levi said having CDC scientists overseas is important in creating a stronger global disease detection system. The vacancies create the risk that "we won't get the warning we need and we won't be as prepared as we should be," he said.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a CDC watchdog, said it's in the best interest of the world to get the positions filled. "We need to do what it takes to cut through red tape in the hiring process and encourage seasoned CDC leaders to fill important positions overseas," he said. "The global public health threats we face are high stakes."

In addition to bureaucratic delays, Blount's memo says that HHS sets unusually short assignment lengths for foreign postings, making it difficult for the CDC to recruit and retain qualified staff.

While the U.S. Department of State lets staff remain abroad for 12 years, the memo says, HHS limits foreign postings to eight consecutive years — and only six years in one country.

"We are currently bringing fully qualified staff back from overseas" because of the time limits, the memo says.

The memo states that hiring within the CDC has become difficult: "Most highly qualified CDC staff interested in overseas assignments have been placed. It is now a challenge to hire experienced staff with sufficient institutional knowledge to work in other countries."

The result, the memo says, is that the CDC is being forced to put new hires in important leadership positions abroad. Meanwhile, for vacancies in such difficult locations as Angola, Burkina Faso and Rwanda, the CDC is seeking permission to hire non-U.S. citizens.

Alison Young writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.