Ahmed Aboulenein
| ReutersThe U.S. Senate on Aug. 5 confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, handing the Trump administration a rare win after repeated failed attempts to fill top health posts.Schwartz, President Donald Trump's third pick to run the CDC, will be the health agency's first permanent director since Susan Monarez, Trump's second pick, was fired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year after less than a month over a clash on vaccine policy.Schwartz is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and was a deputy surgeon general during the COVID-19 pandemic in Trump's first term. Schwartz played a key role in the nation's pandemic response, helping coordinate national preparedness in the first year of the health crisis.Trump nominated Schwartz in April. The CDC has lacked a permanent leader for all but a month of his second term. "She is a STAR," Trump said in a post on Truth Social on April 16. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee sent Schwartz to the full Senate on a 13-10 vote, with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, the lone member to cross party lines, in late July.Public health experts praised Schwartz's credentials at the time of her nomination but questioned whether she would have the autonomy to lead the agency."This seems like a dream pick," said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health. "The bigger question is whether she'll be allowed to do the job."Schwartz is set to inherit an agency confronting America's worst measles resurgence in three decades, driven by falling childhood immunization rates, an international Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the largest U.S. foodborne illness outbreak in recent years.Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Mark PorterContributing: Ken Alltucker, USA TODAY, Reuters
