July 17, 2025

Call for Declarations of Harm from Federal Removal of Publicly Available Health Data

Aligned with our mission to provide leadership and advocacy to shape the future of medicine and advance quality care for Washingtonians, the WSMA is leading a legal challenge to the federal administration's removal of essential public health and scientific data from federal websites. The case, Washington State Medical Association et. al. v. Kennedy et. al., is proceeding, and there have been promising developments, including a recent win in a Doctors for America lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a similar case to ours, if narrower in scope.

The case now enters the most important phase: preparing the plaintiff and third-party declarations of harm, which will demonstrate to the court how this data scrubbing is impacting WSMA members and causing real-world problems. These stories will humanize the harm and cut through the legalese and bureaucratic jargon that is otherwise pervasive in these types of cases. The more stories and details we can provide, the more convincing and powerful our case will be.

We are looking for individuals and organizations to submit declarations of harm. The process is simple and requires only a 20-minute interview with the legal team, who will then draft the declaration on your behalf. You will have the opportunity to review it, make changes to it, and then send it back to the attorneys to file. During the interview, the legal team will want to know what you do, who you serve, and how you and those you serve are harmed (without, of course, disclosing any confidential or otherwise protected information). These declarations will be filed publicly and under penalty of perjury. This means your statement will be part of the public record, and you are affirming that what you share is true to the best of your knowledge. Your declaration will be just one of among dozens of others who are also telling their stories.

We will aim to wrap up interviews by Aug. 17 with some flexibility. If you are willing to submit a declaration to the court telling your own personal story of impact, contact WSMA Director of Communications Graham Short.

Examples of harms, specific and broad

To help you consider this request, some examples of real-world harm from WSMA members in a member survey this spring include:

• "I use the CDC website frequently to get up to date recommendations regarding STI treatment (especially syphilis, which is sharply rising in our state)."
• "I frequently reference the Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use."
• "I refer to these routinely, at least four times per year, to ensure I'm providing up to date treatment for STIs. Further, my residency team refers to these at least weekly if not daily, and they disappeared."
• "We need this data for a randomized trial to improve cervical cancer screening in these health systems."
• "Risk that clinical studies are not accurate for treatment effects in all patients"

Health care organizations-medical societies, medical groups, clinics, health systems, hospitals, etc.-are encouraged to submit a declaration on behalf of their organization. Some examples of the broader context of harm caused by these selective data removals:

• Relying on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Department of Health and Human Services data to guide care for rising STI rates, maternal health risks, opioid-related harms, and environmental exposures.
• Ensuring continuing medical education is grounded in up-to-date, publicly available data.
• Engaging with lawmakers and public agencies to improve access to care and health outcomes across populations by providing localized and disaggregated data.
• Managing grant-funded health care improvement programs that depend on reliable and accessible public data.

Why this is important

These stories from members and health care organizations could very well be the most compelling, by demonstrating to the judge the real-world impact of the data scrubbing on patient care, medical education, health care advocacy, and health care quality improvement efforts. As our legal team put it, "We want to put a literal stack of declarations from organizations, providers, researchers, on the judge's desk so she fully grasps how big of a deal this is."

Restoring the scrubbed data

Declarants are encouraged to be specific as to the websites and data sources that were removed, scrubbed, or otherwise edited, that have impacted their work. The likely outcome of this lawsuit, if successful, is to have those specific data restored.

To submit a declaration

To submit a declaration, contact WSMA Director of Communications Graham Short, who will arrange next steps. Please act as soon as possible and no later than Aug. 17, if possible.

Help us by amplifying this call for declarations

If you have colleagues in your practice or system who were impacted, please extend this call for declarations to them-the more the better. Please also extend the call to your system leaders, if they'd like to consider submitting a declaration on behalf of their organization. Interested parties may contact WSMA Director of Communications Graham Short.

Background

WSMA press release announcing lawsuit (includes relevant Executive Orders)