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President Donald Trump has nominated Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Schwartz, a Coast Guard rear admiral who served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term, is set to fill a leadership role that has been vacant since the ousting of Susan Monarez. Writing on Truth Social, Trump praised Schwartz as "incredibly talented," noting her background as a doctor and attorney.
Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has been overseeing the CDC on an interim basis since Monarez left.
Monarez was ousted in September after she clashed with Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his vaccine policies.
Monarez wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that she was fired because she refused to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a new advisory panel Kennedy had placed several vaccine sceptics on.
Schwartz worked for 24 years in the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service, and has a medical degree from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Maryland. She left her government work after Trump's first term, when the Biden administration did not select her as acting US surgeon general.
Before nominating Monarez, Trump's first choice to lead the CDC was Dave Weldon, a former Florida congressman who has criticised vaccines. But that nomination was withdrawn after it became clear Weldon did not have the votes to be confirmed.
Monarez ended up serving as the CDC leader for just shy of a month.
Under Kennedy's leadership, the CDC has seen sweeping changes, including mass firings and restructuring that he has claimed helped reduce "bureaucratic sprawl".
