President Barack Obama on Friday named New York City health commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden to head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Frieden, whose appointment does not require Senate confirmation, would take over the embattled agency next month, The New York Times reported.
A 48-year-old infectious disease specialist who has led New York City's fight to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, pass out free condoms to organizations and press for mandatory HIV testing as part of regular medical exams, Frieden inherits the CDC mantle at a time when the agency faces deep morale and organizational difficulties, while wrestling with how and whether to produce a swine flu vaccine, the Times reported.
Often a controversial leader during his seven years as New York's top health official, Frieden has had a history of focusing on health threats endangering large numbers of people, sometimes at the expense of more popular causes, the Times said. His high-profile style is likely to put him center stage in the Obama administration's efforts to overhaul the nation's health care system and to improve the safety of its food supply.
With his appointment, Frieden would become the second former New York health commissioner named to a top federal health post. Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, who held the post in the 1990s, is nearing confirmation as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Both Frieden and Hamburg, who have a along and close relationship, according to the Times, and together led New York's battle to stop an epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis infections, will play lead roles in how the U.S. will fight swine flu next fall if the virus returns. They may also play crucial roles in reforming food safety -- a top priority of the Obama administration, even within the overhaul of the nation's health care system.
Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit public health advocacy organization, told the Times that Frieden is "a transformational leader." "I think the administration selected Tom Frieden because he can take public health to a new place," Levi said.
Facing Frieden are host of internal problems at the agency that he will inherit from former CDC head Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, who left in January, and whose long effort to reorganize the agency's bureaucracy has been widely criticized as sapping morale and causing a raft of top staff departures.
"Morale is the weakest thing at the agency right now," Dr. James M. Hughes, former director of the CDCs National Center for Infectious Diseases, told the Times. "He has to really listen to people."