Trump nominates Erica Schwartz to be director of the CDC

President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated Erica Schwartz to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ending a months-long effort to choose a permanent leader for the beleaguered health agency.

Schwartz, who must be confirmed by the Senate, will take on the role of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., overseeing a series of controversial health policy changes at the agency, including an overhaul of childhood vaccine recommendations.

Schwartz served as Deputy Surgeon General during the first Trump administration, where she played a key role in the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She spent more than 20 years in uniform, including as a rear admiral and chief medical officer in the Coast Guard.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been serving as acting director of the CDC — a title that expired last month under federal law. That law, called the Vacancies Act, limits the amount of time an acting employee can serve in place of a Senate-confirmed official to 210 days.

Late last month marked 210 days since the firing of CDC Director Dr. Susan Munarez.

She has so far been the only person to serve as CDC director during Trump’s second term, holding the position for less than a month last summer. In her testimony before Congress in September, Monarrez said she was fired after refusing Kennedy’s demands to agree to vaccine recommendations that she believed lacked scientific support.

It is unclear how Schwartz’s views on vaccines or other major public health policies compare with Kennedy’s.

Also on Thursday, Trump said he had selected Sean Slovenski as CDC’s deputy director and chief operating officer, and Jennifer Shuford as CDC’s deputy director and chief medical officer. As head of the Texas Department of State Health Services, Shuford led the state’s response to a large measles outbreak last year, and credited vaccination and testing with declaring the disease over.

Schwartz’s nomination comes after several tumultuous months for the agency, which has been plagued by leadership turmoil, low morale, a major personnel shake-up and controversial changes to US vaccine policy. Before leaving the leadership last year, the staff was shaken by an armed attack on the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on August 8.

Last month, a judge blocked the Vaccine Commission’s crucial effort to reform U.S. immunization policy. This includes an effort to reduce the number of doses recommended for children from 17 to 11.

Trust in federal health agencies declined during Kennedy’s tenure as Health and Human Services secretary, according to a February poll by the health policy research group KFF, with declines across the political spectrum.