The chair of the committee, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who is also a doctor, begins by telling the hearing he will approach this as a doctor and a senator.

He says if doctors do not have clear guidance, or have a reason to distrust information from the CDC, they cannot make informed decisions. "Children and adults' health is at risk," he says.

"She has unimpeachable credentials," he says, referring to Monarez.

He says - referring to Monarez's dismissal - we need to ask ourselves: "What happened? Did we fail? Was it something we should have done differently?"

The Senate hearing, during which Susan Monarez will give her version of events, is about to begin.

Ex-CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry is alongside Monarez to give evidence. Dr Houry resigned in protest to Monarez’s firing last month, along with several other senior CDC officials.

Watch live at the top of the page.

Following her dismissal last month, Susan Monarez lambasted RFK Jr’s leadership as health secretary.

In an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal, external, Monarez wrote that she faced "pressure to compromise science itself".

"The Senate confirmed me to ensure that unbiased evidence serves our nation’s health, and for doing that, I lost my job. America's children could lose far more," she wrote.

Image source, EPA

Earlier this month, the health secretary was asked at a separate Senate hearing why he fired the new CDC director, Susan Monarez.

RFK Jr claimed he had asked Monarez if she was a "trustworthy person" and she had replied "no", to some disbelief from his opponents at the hearing.

He also said a claim by Monarez - that he told her to sign off on vaccine recommendations that didn't have a scientific basis - was false, and that she had lied about this in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

We'll have more on that WSJ article in our next post.

Susan Coller Monarez grew up in rural Wisconsin.

Her father was dairy farmer turned police officer, and her mother held a string of jobs including factory worker and librarian, she told senators during her confirmation hearing in June.

She was the first CDC director to go through a Senate confirmation process since a change in law in 2023.

She was also the first who wasn’t a medical doctor to head the agency. But Monarez does have a high qualifications in health - she has a doctoral degree in microbiology and immunology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was previously the deputy director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a federal agency started under the Biden administration to fund health research.

She also worked at the White House in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and on the National Security Council.

She was sworn in by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr on 31 July after a 51-47 Senate vote on party lines with Republicans backing her.

Before that she was the acting director. She was fired on 27 August, less than a month after her swearing-in.

Image source, Reuters

Brandon Livesay
US reporter

Susan Monarez was abruptly sacked as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) four weeks ago.

Today, she will give her account of why she was ousted by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr - which happened less than a month after she took on the role.

At a separate hearing to this same Senate panel earlier this month, RFK Jr said he fired Monarez after asking her if she was “trustworthy”. He claims she replied “no”.

We will hear Monarez’s side of the story today. In testimony obtained by BBC’s US partner CBS News, Monarez is expected to say she thinks she was fired because she refused to pre-approve recommendations from a vaccine advisory panel, and that she would not fire career scientists.

It all comes in the same week that the very same vaccine advisory panel will meet. Monarez has suggested this meeting could pose a “real risk” that vaccines for children in America could be limited.

Stick with us as we cover the hearing.