Biden’s plan to tap former North Carolina health chief as CDC director wins praise

Public health advocates today applauded the news that President Joe Biden intends to name Mandy Cohen, a physician and public health expert with broad government experience, to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Biden will appoint Cohen by the end of the month to replace current CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who will step down on 30 June, The Washington Post reported yesterday , citing three anonymous sources. The White House did not respond to requests for comment and Cohen could not be reached.

If named to the job, Cohen would confront the daunting task of reinvigorating a demoralized agency and making it better prepared for future pandemics. CDC was pilloried during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic for poor performance on everything from its rollout of COVID-19 tests to its public communications. And the agency has become a lightning rod for conservative critics, who accuse it of overstepping its authority.

As North Carolina’s secretary of health and human services from 2017 until last year, Cohen won praise for adeptly and transparently steering the state’s pandemic response. She is also a veteran of Washington, D.C., having worked at two U.S. health agencies, and is well connected with senior Biden administration officials.

Cohen is “savvy, courageous, passionate, and inspiring. My first thought upon hearing the news was that CDC will be very lucky to have her,” says Nancy Messonnier, a former head of CDC’s respiratory diseases center who is now dean at the University of North Carolina’s (UNC’s) Gillings School of Global Public Health.

“She’s smart, personable, engaging. People [in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina] really thought a lot of her,” adds Georges Benjamin, longtime executive director of the American Public Health Association. Benjamin has worked with Cohen in state-level public health and on a panel of the National Academy of Medicine, where both are members.

Cohen, age 44, is an internist with a medical degree from Yale University and a master’s in public health from Harvard University. After co-founding a doctors’ group that lobbied for former President Barack Obama’s election, she came to Washington, D.C., in 2008 as deputy director of women’s health services at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She later worked under current White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients to fix problems with the Obamacare website and became chief operating officer and chief of staff at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, CDC’s parent agency.

Since stepping down as North Carolina’s health secretary, Cohen has been an executive vice president for Aledade, a startup company that works with primary health care practices.

“I’m thrilled” that Cohen is being picked to head CDC, says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who worked with Cohen as a volunteer consultant for North Carolina’s COVID-19 response. “Dr. Cohen led North Carolina’s pandemic response with courage, pragmatism, and warmth, and I’m confident she’ll bring those strengths to the CDC.”

Barbara Rimer, dean of the UNC school of public health until last year, sat in on early pandemic calls with North Carolina’s governor, Cohen, legislators, and other academics and praises Cohen’s collaborative approach. Rimer also says Cohen was an excellent communicator during near-daily pandemic press conferences with Governor Roy Cooper. “Science took the lead,” even “in a highly political environment,” Rimer recalls. “I think that will stand her in really good stead as she takes over CDC.”

The CDC directorship does not require Senate confirmation. But the appointment is certain to be scrutinized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle as the $9.2 billion, 13,000-employee agency navigates the end of the COVID-19 pandemic after an uneven performance during which its public approval rating plummeted.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over the agency, has since January twice summoned Walensky to Capitol Hill to testify, and promises to remain a sharp agency critic. “The [CDC] has broken the American people’s trust through its mismanagement of recent responses, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” committee leaders said in a statement 2 days ago.

In North Carolina, Cohen laid the groundwork for an expansion of Medicaid and improved the public health data infrastructure during the pandemic. Benjamin attributes her success in part to her nonpartisan approach. “Her reputation, at least in North Carolina, was that both sides of the aisle were comfortable working with her and trusted her,” he says.

Walensky, an infectious disease physician who came to CDC from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, had no appreciable government experience when she took the agency’s helm in January 2021. She came under fire for confusing or controversial communication on school openings , masking , and boosters , among other pandemic responses. In August 2022, Walensky launched an organizational overhaul of the agency, aimed at speeding its scientific publications and improving its public communications, among other things. It’s not clear whether Cohen, if appointed, would continue with those changes or start her own.