Dr. Mandy Cohen Selected As New CDC Head

NEW YORK — 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,” Biden said in a statement. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] She succeeds Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 54, who last month announced she was resigning effective June 30. 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 wi...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Public Health wire Source Type: news