HICPAC Update: Tell the ACLU and DOJ to act on masks in healthcare

We're writing to the ACLU and DOJ about HICPAC. Join Us.

This week, we wrote to the ACLU to tell them to take action on HICPAC’s dangerous recommendations to the CDC regarding healthcare infection control practices. We plan to send a similar letter to the Office of Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice and we are gathering signatures. Would you add your name as an individual or an organization to our letter?

When you’re done, see and share our post about our HICPAC ACLU letter on Instagram. Please see coverage of our letter in Forbes as well.

Background

Back in November 2023, the CDC’s HICPAC (Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee) recommended dangerous proposed changes to the CDC’s Infection Control Handbook. If you haven’t been following, they disregarded intense pressure from unions, disability rights and patient advocates group — including letter campaigns with hundreds of expert signatures, written public comment from hundreds of concerned individuals, lots of press attention, and moving testimony at their public meetings. The new proposed guidelines prioritize employer profits and cost-cutting measures over patient and healthcare worker safety, and will certainly weaken infection control protocols in healthcare, because they equate surgical masks to fit-tested N95 respirators, and make no reference to isolation protocols or layered protections. HICPAC’s proposed guidelines fail to recognize aerosol transmission and provide adequate control measures preventing both healthcare workers and patients from contracting preventable infectious diseases — from measles, to SARS-1 to COVID — while seeking care. Most recently, National Nurses United has written to the CDC director advising them to scrap the guidelines and start over, and include representatives from occupational safety and health unions, ventilation experts, and patient advocates into the decision making process.

If HICPAC goes forward, their proposed guidelines will likely make healthcare even more inaccessible for protected classes: disabled people and elders, and may constitute violation of Federal law. That’s why we are writing to the ACLU and the Office of Civil Rights at the US Department of Justice and telling them to take action, including legal action, with regards to HICPAC’s deeply flawed recommendations to the CDC.

Join us by adding your Organizational Endorsement and your individual name. Read the full letter and sign here.