Alaska has long been at or near the top in the nation for rates of active tuberculosis. The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited Alaska this week, to learn more about why the state struggles with high rates of so many diseases, especially in Alaska Native populations.
Dr. Erica Schwartz started her role for the CDC in August and said Alaska is the first state she has visited in her position. She said she wanted to visit Alaska first partly because the state has the highest rate of TB in the country.
"We should not be talking about tuberculosis rates that are similar to a third world country. That should not be. So that's why I'm here," she said.
Schwartz visited Anchorage, Bethel and Napaskiak and that helped her better understand some of the public health challenges in the state, she said. And she says experiencing the remote nature of rural communities helps her visualize the thoughts and concerns that Senator Lisa Murkowski has shared.
"When she speaks of rural, I now understand what rural really is," Schwartz said. "I mean, being at Bethel, being at (Napaskiak), that truly is rural. Once you see it, you will never forget it."
Schwartz said she met and talked with tribal health organizations and the state health department during her trip and the aim is to collaborate on solutions.
In 2025, Alaska's health department lost at least $25 million in federal grant funding. And, soon after, the state cut staff in the tuberculosis task force in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. It's a region with especially high rates of TB. Schwartz did not address questions about whether this new collaboration would include funding or aim to restore lost programming.
She said the discussions during her visit didn't identify specific solutions, but they included talk about the social determinants of health, like income, transportation and constraints for adequate housing that can spread infectious disease.
"You have multi generations living in very small homes," Schwartz said. "And if you have one person who has active TB, guess what? The entire family is going to have active TB, and so we talked about, how do we look at those sort of non-medical issues?"
Schwartz said the CDC can't directly address housing access or other social determinants of health but can bring attention to why they matter from a public health standpoint.
