Biden says he plans to appoint Mandy Cohen as CDC director
Why it matters: Dr. Cohen will oversee the CDC’s response to public health crises.
The nomination does not require Senate confirmation, meaning Dr. Cohen can assume leadership of the CDC once Dr. Walensky resigns. Congress recently passed legislation requiring the director of the agency to be confirmed, but the provision won’t take effect until 2025.
In her own statement Friday, Dr. Walensky Dr. Cohen “perfectly suited to lead CDC as it moves forward by building on the lessons learned from Covid-19.”
The Biden administration allowed the federal Covid public health emergency to lapse in May. Dr. Cohen will oversee the CDC’s recently revised efforts to detect the coronavirus, including in wastewater. She will also be responsible for a host of public health crises handled at the agency’s centers, including other outbreaks of infectious disease and opioid use.
The CDC has been dealing declining public confidence as the nation recovers from a pandemic in which the agency botched early attempts to test Americans, allowed political interference in its scientific literature and issued confused guidance on how to test, mask and understand the spread of the virus, according to health experts.
Dr. Cohen would be the top candidate on a sizable list of names that has been whittled down by government officials in recent weeks. According to a person familiar with the search process, she was the first choice of Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff and the former Biden administration’s Covid response coordinator.
Background: Dr. Cohen brings experience in the public and private sectors.
Dr. Cohen, an internist and executive at Aledade, a company that supports local health clinics and physicians, served in the Obama administration, including as chief operating officer and chief of staff for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Dr. Ashish K. Jha, who left the White House this week after leading the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response, said Dr. Cohen has unusually strong credentials in the public and private sectors for a CDC chief.
“One of the things we’ve learned during this pandemic and other public health crises is that an effective response requires building a bridge between public health and the healthcare system,” he said. “There are very few people who have deep expertise in both.”
Dr. Cohen also oversaw North Carolina’s response to Covid-19 as a political appointee at a time of divided state government. Experience that some public health experts say could lead to the complexities of running an Atlanta-based agency within the Washington-based Department of Health. and Human Services.
“What’s important now with an incoming CDC director is the ability to work with officials in Washington and around the country,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Before Mr. Biden announced his intention to appoint Dr. Cohen, a group of Republican legislators wrote to him objecting to her likely selection, citing her support for mask requirements and saying she had “politicized science.”
What’s next: Dr. Cohen will be overseeing an overhaul of the agency.
Dr. Walensky began a wide-ranging effort last year to reorganize what public health experts say is an agency that is chronically underfunded, a process that Dr. Cohen will take over. That includes work to modernize the data systems and improve communication with the public.