An infectious disease specialist with experience, common sense and good judgment will be heading up CDC. By the time he gets there, Thomas Frieden will have some invaluable H1N1 experience under his belt.
President Obama will announce on Friday that he has chosen Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the New York City health commissioner, as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, administration officials said Thursday.
Dr. Frieden, a 48-year-old infectious disease specialist, has cut a high and sometimes contentious profile in his seven years as New York’s top health official under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. He led the crusade to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, pushed to make H.I.V. testing a routine part of medical exams, and defended a program that passes out more than 35 million condoms a year.
At the C.D.C., he will inherit a host of immediate and long-term problems, including a looming decision about whether and how to produce a swine flu vaccine. Health experts say the agency must resolve serious morale and organizational issues even as the administration struggles to overhaul the nation’s health care system.
Frieden is qualified. Like Margaret Hamburg (to go to FDA), and a host of other nominees, Obama is picking people who know their jobs and who bring talent and promise.
"I think the administration selected Tom Frieden because he can take public health to a new place," said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit public health advocacy organization. "He’s a transformational leader."
[Jeff Levi was interviewed here at Daily Kos]. The morale issues have a great deal to do with the previous administration's "efficiency" push, with reorganization leading to the exodus of many senior scientists, and the acquiescence on some of Bush's political agenda (such as abstinence) appears to be over. That's a very good thing.
Frieden has conducted himself well in news conferences discussing the H1N1 outbreak in NYC, and his school closure and testing policy seems sensible... concentrate more on the ill than the worried well. Alas, that experience is likely to come in handy.
This position (Director, CDC) does not require Senate confirmation.
More comment in G35Guy's diary, same topic, where Dr. Frieden's bio was posted. DrSteveBexpands on this.