President Donald Trump has nominated Erica Schwartz, the former deputy U.S. surgeon general, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eight months after its director was ousted for refusing to bypass career scientists and rubber-stamp changes to federal vaccine recommendations.
Trump announced Schwartz’s nomination on Thursday on Truth Social. He also announced three more nominations to the agency: Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart executive, for CDC deputy director and chief operating officer; Dr. Jennifer Shuford, Texas’ health commissioner, for CDC deputy director and chief medical officer; and Dr. Sara Brenner, a senior FDA official, as a senior counselor for public health.
“These Highly Respected Doctors of Medicine have the knowledge, experience, and TOP degrees to restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC, which was an absolute disaster focused on “mandates” under Sleepy Joe,” Trump posted.
Schwartz’s nomination will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
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Schwartz’s public health credentials may lend some much-needed credibility to an embattled CDC, which has been marked by high leadership turnover, sweeping personnel cuts and a shooting at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters last summer.
She served as deputy surgeon general during the first Trump administration. She also spent 24 years in the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which the surgeon general leads.
She has a medical degree from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Maryland.
Her selection comes months after the administration’s last CDC director, Susan Monarez, was fired by Trump in August after refusing to comply with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insistence that she approve changes to vaccine policies. Several other top CDC officials, including the CDC’s chief medical officer, submitted their resignations after Monarez’s dismissal.
Jim O’Neill, the acting CDC director who followed Monarez, departed the agency in February after signing off on major cuts to the childhood vaccine schedule. The director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, has filled in since O’Neill’s departure but his capabilities have been limited since the role must be confirmed by the Senate.
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