Posted on 06/16/23
| News Source: Associated Press
Dr. Mandy Cohen, a former North Carolina official, will be the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House announced Friday.
Unlike the last two people to serve as head of the nation’s top federal public health agency, Cohen has prior experience running a government agency: She was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 until last year. Before that, she held health-related jobs at two federal agencies.
“Dr. Cohen is one of the nation’s top physicians and health leaders with experience leading large and complex organizations, and a proven track-record protecting Americans’ health and safety,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
She succeeds Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 54, who last month announced she was leaving at the end of June. Cohen’s starting date has not been announced. Her appointment does not require Senate confirmation.
Walensky, a former infectious disease expert at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, took over at the CDC in 2021 — about a year after the pandemic began.
Cohen, 44, will take over after some rough years at the CDC, whose 12,000-plus employees are charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.
The Atlanta-based federal agency had long been seen as a global leader on disease control and a reliable source of health information. But polls showed the public trust eroded, partly as a result of the CDC’s missteps in dealing with COVID-19 and partly due to political attacks and misinformation campaigns.
Walensky started a reorganization effort that is designed to make the agency more nimble and to improve its communications.
Cohen was raised on Long Island, New York. Her mom was a nurse practitioner. Cohen has a medical degree from Yale and a master’s in public health from Harvard.
She also has been an advocate. She was a founding member and former executive director of Doctors for America, which pushes to expand health insurance coverage and address racial and ethnic disparities. Another founder was Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general. The group formed in the midst of an effort to organize doctors into political action and support Barack Obama’s candidacy for president.