President Joe Biden has announced that he will name Dr. Mandy Cohen as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Unlike her two predecessors, Cohen has experience in running a government agency, having served as the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 to 2022. Before this, she worked as the chief operating officer and chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, where she implemented Affordable Care Act programs, including the expansion of health insurance coverage. Cohen’s appointment does not require Senate confirmation, and her start date has not yet been announced.
According to a statement by the White House, 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.” Cohen succeeds Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who announced she was leaving the post at the end of June. 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 at the CDC after some difficult years, during which the agency faced attacks and misinformation campaigns, resulting in public trust erosion. Walensky began a reorganization effort aimed at making the agency more agile and improving its communications. Cohen has a medical degree from Yale and a master’s in public health from Harvard. She was a founding member and former executive director of Doctors for America, a group that advocates for expanding health insurance coverage and addressing racial and ethnic disparities.
Cohen started working for the federal government in 2008 at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where she served as deputy director for women’s health services. Later, she held a series of federal jobs, many of them with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, rising to chief operating officer. In 2017, she took the North Carolina health and human services job, where she became the face of the state’s response to the coronavirus. Some residents dubbed her the “3 W’s lady” for her constant reminders to wear a mask, wash hands frequently, and watch the distance from other people.
Cohen resigned from the state post in late 2021, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family and pursue new opportunities. She then took a leadership post at Aledade Inc., a Maryland-based consulting company. Walensky congratulated Cohen on her appointment, saying that her experience and tenure in North Carolina make her perfectly suited to lead the CDC as it moves forward by building on the lessons learned from COVID-19 to create an organization poised to meet public health challenges of the future.
Original Story at www.cbsnews.com – 2023-06-16 17:09:00