President Donald Trump announced Thursday Erica Schwartz, M.D., as his nominee to fill the long-vacant role of director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Schwartz, who also has a law degree and a master’s of public health, previously served as deputy surgeon general during the president’s first term.
She is a Navy officer and retired rear admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. She played a key role in the federal government’s testing program during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, including as a physician responsible for ordering the tests used at drive-through sites en masse.
Her likely nomination was reported early this week and confirmed in a Truth Social post in which the president also shared the appointments of several other health department positions: Sean Slovenski, a senior executive at Walmart, as CDC deputy director and chief operating officer; Jennifer Shuford, M.D., currently Texas’ health commissioner, as CDC deputy director and chief medical officer; and Sara Brenner, M.D., a Food and Drug Administration veteran who served as its acting commissioner, as senior counselor for public health to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(Health and Human Services)
“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 wrote in the post. “Together, they will do a TREMENDOUS job leading the CDC as we continue to MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AND GREAT AGAIN!”
Compared to the prior nominees and acting directors brought by the administration for the major public health role, Shwartz is a highly qualified and uncontroversial choice. She is a vocal supporter of vaccines, an issue that sunk prior choices and has become a political focal point amid the recent policy efforts of Kennedy, her would-be boss if confirmed by the Senate.
Schwartz would have a tall task ahead of her. The CDC has faced substantial upheaval in the past year, between mass layoffs, reportedly hijacked decision-making on public health issues and a shooting. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the CDC has only had a permanent director for 29 days.
That director, Susan Monarez, Ph.D., said she was pushed out after refusing to rubberstamp Kennedy’s changes to the composition of a key vaccine advisory panel and other personnel changes. Kennedy, testifying later to Congress, contested some details of the former director’s account but said he moved to fire her because she was disloyal.
The CDC has been under the temporary leadership of Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institutes of Health, though his authority has been hamstrung for the past few weeks due to a missed deadline to nominate a permanent replacement.
Kennedy, who appeared before Congress Thursday to defend the White House’s proposed budget cuts and reorganization of several health agencies, including the CDC, told legislators before the president’s announcement that he’s been told morale at the CDC “is much better than a year ago … during all the rifts.
“I would say that we’re bringing in an extraordinary team—the team has been leaked and it’s gotten applause from both Republicans and Democrats,” Kennedy said in response to questioning from Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer. “I think this new team is really going to be able to revolutionize CDC and get it back on track and get it doing the job it does better than any other health agency in the world.”
While the choice may be less divisive, Schwartz’s confirmation is no sure bet. Senate Democrats have opposed the administration’s health nominees in near lockstep (though they later apologized to Monarez) and a handful of key Republicans have become frustrated with Kennedy and his department’s instability. Those rifts have so far stalled a vote to confirm Casey Means, M.D., a Make America Healthy Again-aligned physician-influencer who was nominated as surgeon general.
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