Public health veteran is Trump’s pick to lead CDC as administration shifts tone on vaccines

By Sarah Owermohle, Brenda Goodman, Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a public health veteran who has led vaccination programs, a new sign of the administration’s shifting views on vaccines.

Dr. Erica Schwartz’s nomination to lead the embattled agency came just hours after US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance at a congressional hearing where he made some of his most supportive comments yet on vaccination.

The measles vaccine is safe and effective “for most people” and can be safer than getting measles, Kennedy said Thursday morning under Democrats’ grilling before the House Ways and Means Committee.

He then agreed when Rep. Linda Sanchez, a Democrat from California, pressed him on whether vaccination could have saved at least one child’s life during a large Texas measles outbreak last year.

Yet at other times throughout the day, he hedged and forcefully pushed back, as when Pennylvania Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean suggested that his history of vaccine skepticism had driven a fall in vaccination rates.

“They had nothing to do with me,” Kennedy said during a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on health. “Vaccination rates dropped after Covid because of mismanagement.”

The tense back-and-forths tee up the likely questions Schwartz will face during her Senate confirmation hearing over how strongly she’s willing to break with Kennedy on controversial issues such as vaccine policy.

Schwartz served as deputy surgeon general in Trump’s first administration, spent 24 years in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as a rear admiral in the Coast Guard. She holds a medical degree from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Maryland.

Kennedy and his team had recommended Schwartz to the president along with a slate of other appointees to shore up CDC leadership whom Trump also named Thursday.

They include US Food and Drug Administration Principal Deputy Commissioner Dr. Sara Brenner, who will serve as a public health adviser to Kennedy; Dr. Jennifer Shuford, commissioner of the Texas health department, who will become CDC deputy director and chief medical officer; and Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart and Humana executive who will serve as a deputy director and chief operating officer.

The secretary nodded to the incoming group of CDC leaders during one congressional hearing Thursday.

“We’re bringing in an extraordinary team. … The team has been leaked, and it’s gotten applause from both Republicans and Democrats,” Kennedy said before the House Appropriations subcommittee on health. “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 that it does better than any other health agency in the world.”

Schwartz certainly has a background in the CDC’s areas of expertise. During her time with the Coast Guard, she led disease surveillance and vaccination programs and wrote Coast Guard policy on pandemic influenza and other viral disease outbreaks.

She also played a role in the government’s response to natural disasters, including hurricanes and earthquakes.

“During her time as Deputy Surgeon General, I had the opportunity to collaborate with her and the team on public health projects and particularly the COVID-19 response,” Michael Baker, director of health care policy at the nonprofit American Action Forum, wrote in an email to CNN. “Her leadership was essential to the early response, and she became a go-to resource to communicate with state leaders on testing, surveillance, and other emergency measures. Her strong leadership qualities and wide-ranging view of and expertise in public health are crucial to stabilizing and ultimately strengthening CDC during this tumultuous time.”

The White House was under a deadline to nominate a permanent director for the CDC after Kennedy abruptly fired the last Senate-confirmed director, Dr. Susan Monarez, in August. The federal Vacancies Act says a Senate-confirmed position can be open for only 210 days, and past that deadline, the agency cannot have an acting director. That 210-day mark fell in late March.

Currently, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is serving a dual role as director of the National Institutes of Health and as head of the CDC, after serving as its acting director.

If confirmed into the role, Schwartz will inherit an agency looking to strike a balance between its traditional public health mission and a slew of high-profile changes, exits and proposed budget cuts.

Monarez was in office for just under a month before she was fired by Kennedy over her refusal to rubber-stamp changes to vaccine policy. After her dismissal, several high-level officials in the agency resigned in protest, leaving a leadership vacuum.

Shortly after Monarez took office, a gunman who blamed vaccines for his health problems attacked the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, firing more than 180 rounds that sprayed multiple buildings and killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose.

Prior to the shooting, CDC staffers had endured months of chaos. Thousands of reduction-in-force cuts hollowed out divisions and departments, though some of those were reinstated after legal action. Web pages on vaccine safety were edited without consultation with staff scientists to cast doubt on statements that vaccines do not cause autism. Political appointees filled top leadership posts that had once been occupied by career staff.

Kennedy dismissed a key panel of 17 experts that advise the CDC on its vaccine decisions, replacing them with his own picks, many of whom have emphasized the risks of vaccines while downplaying their health benefits. A federal judge has reversed some of Kennedy’s efforts, saying he probably violated federal procedures.

Meanwhile, measles cases in the US are at their highest level in three decades, and the nation risks losing its status as a country that has eliminated ongoing transmission of the highly infectious disease within its borders. Other infectious diseases, including whooping cough and mumps, have also surged as vaccination rates have dropped.

Schwartz will go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. The committee has not yet voted on another Trump administration nominee, Dr. Casey Means, to serve as surgeon general. Means testified in a February hearing that circled back repeatedly to her views on vaccines, with some Republicans, including committee Chairman Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, expressing concerns about the administration’s changes to vaccine recommendations.

Asked by lawmakers on Thursday about morale at the CDC, Kennedy said that it has improved since broad layoffs led by federal DOGE Services last year and that the new CDC leadership will help the agency progress.

“Morale is much better than it was a year ago. I think a year ago, it was really at a nadir. You know, during all the [reductions in force],” he said.

CNN’s Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.

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