On Oct. 21, 2025, in the latest bid to plug gaps in the federal government’s public health infrastructure, two institutions are coming together to create an alternative to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaunted Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — often called “the voice of the CDC.” 

The New England Journal of Medicine and the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy will begin publishing “public health alerts” in the coming month, CIDRAP Director Michael Osterholm announced at the IDWeek conference. 

The alerts “will basically serve to be a way to convey the information that once was shared in the MMWR with all of us in a very timely way,” he said at the opening plenary of the conference of infectious disease specialists, according to a recording shared with STAT. “We encourage all of you to begin thinking about submissions of outbreaks or data you think should be evaluated. So, I hope you’ll help participate in that.”

A spokesperson for NEJM said the alerts would be published in a new section of its NEJM Evidence journal as needed — as opposed to being published on a weekly basis — and be made available for free. “In the coming weeks, we will be sharing more information on a new, rapid digital alert to disseminate essential data on disease outbreaks and other issues of public health importance,” created in partnership with CIDRAP, she added.

The MMWR has been published weekly since 1952 and has become part of the bedrock of public health; historically it’s been where details of new outbreaks and emerging diseases are first reported. But many public health practitioners’ trust in the publication has been shaken. In the earliest days of the Trump administration, new articles could not be published because of a communications pause, making it the first time in the journal’s history that it missed publishing a new edition. Weekly editions have been paused again during the government shutdown, and earlier this month, much of the team behind the journal was laid off before being reinstated hours later.