The American Medical Association has a 180-year history. Its leaders say they’re committed to being “a physicians’ powerful ally in patient care.” Whether in the operating room or the halls of Congress, the AMA says its mission is to remove obstacles and take the lead for the betterment of public health.
With a year until she takes the role of president for the AMA, Atlanta Internist Sandra Fryhofer sees several obstacles, including a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that she says “can’t be trusted.”
“The AMA and I are extremely concerned about the systematic destruction of our public health and vaccine infrastructure at both the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and CDC by HHS Secretary Kennedy and his team of vaccine skeptics,” said Dr. Fryhofer.
She described Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as taking a wrecking ball to America’s health system that “had kept us safe and had reduced untold death and suffering from vaccine-preventable diseases. And unfortunately, now, patients and physicians can really no longer trust the CDC.”
Fryhofer worries minimizing the necessity for vaccines will result in more vaccine-preventable diseases and deaths in children. She points to Kennedy ordering the CDC to end its public messaging campaign for flu vaccines in 2025 amid one of the worst flu seasons in decades.
“The emails reveal that this was a direct ask from the secretary,” said Fryhofer. “And at that time, flu had already killed 68 children, 11 that week alone, and it gets worse from there.”
She says the AMA is already at work combating misinformation, starting with making sure that the public and physicians are aware of what’s happening.
“But ultimately, we need to get ACIP and the CDC restored to their former status,” said Fryhofer.
“To get them so they again are making decisions based upon real science and medical evidence and not politics and anti-vaccine ideology. But at least for now, the best workaround is AMA’s new partnership with VIP, the Vaccine Integrity Project.”
Fryhofer said the Vaccine Integrity Project, which is based at the University of Minnesota, has scientists and vaccine experts doing “the blue-ribbon evidence-based reviews on vaccine safety and efficacy.”
She says specialty societies, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, are also conducting evidence-based reviews to develop vaccine-specific recommendations.
In addition to more than 20 years as a leader within the AMA, Fryhofer is bringing 40 years of education and experience from the Atlanta medical community to her forthcoming position. She trained at Georgia Tech and Emory University. She served as a professor of medicine at Emory and as a liaison for the CDC. Fryhofer also leads her own internal medical practice off Northside Parkway.
Speaking on Tuesday’s edition of “Closer Look,” Fryhofer also spoke to host Rose Scott about Medicaid, the need to fund rural hospitals, and whether Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool for doctors and their patients.
