Aloha to Alliance: Hawaii Joins West Coast Health Front

SACRAMENTO – On Sept. 3, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Washington Governor Bob Ferguson announced they will launch a new West Coast Health Alliance to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics. The alliance represents a unified regional response to the Trump Administration’s destruction of the U.S. CDC’s credibility and scientific integrity.

Now, nearly 24 hours after the launch of the Health Alliance, Hawaii is joining California, Oregon, and Washington in a shared commitment to safeguard public health. Together, these states will provide evidence-based immunization guidance rooted in safety, efficacy, and transparency — ensuring residents receive credible information free from political interference.

“Hawaii is proud to stand with our West Coast partners to ensure public health decisions are grounded in science, not politics,” said Governor Josh Green, M.D. “As an island state, we understand how critical it is to protect our communities from preventable disease. By joining the West Coast Health Alliance, we’re giving Hawaii’s people the same consistent, evidence-based guidance they can trust to keep their families and neighbors safe. Using science as our guiding star, Hawaii had the highest vaccination rate and lowest mortality rate of virtually any other state or region across the globe,” said Green, an emergency room physician who became Governor in 2022. “This approach is critical as we all go forward into an era with severe threats from infectious diseases.”

Details about this new Alliance

The Alliance states will ensure that public health recommendations are guided by safety, efficacy, transparency, access, and trust. The Alliance will help safeguard scientific expertise by ensuring that public health policies in California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii are informed by trusted scientists, clinicians, and other public health leaders. Through this partnership, the four states will start coordinating health guidelines by aligning immunization recommendations informed by national medical organizations. This will allow residents to receive consistent, science-based recommendations they can rely on — regardless of shifting federal actions.

In the coming weeks, the Alliance will finalize shared principles to strengthen public confidence in vaccines and in public health. While each state will independently pursue strategies shaped by their unique laws, geographies, histories, and peoples, these shared principles will form the foundations of the Alliance. The four states affirm and respect Tribal sovereignty, recognizing that Tribes maintain their sovereign authority over vaccine services.

CDC’s dismantling

Since its founding, the CDC has been central to protecting Americans from disease. But recent leadership changes, reduced transparency, and the sidelining of long-trusted advisory bodies have impaired the agency’s capacity to prepare the nation for the respiratory virus season and other public health challenges. In a vacuum of clear, evidence-based vaccine guidance, manufacturers lack reliable information to plan production, health care providers struggle to provide consistent plans of care, and families face uncertainty about access and coverage.