President Donald Trump has nominated microbiologist Susan Monarez to be the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Monarez replaces former U.S. Congressman Dave Weldon, M.D., an army veteran and vaccine skeptic whose nomination was withdrawn in March after it became clear the Senate would not confirm him.
With a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, Monarez will be the first non-M.D. to head the Atlanta-based agency in more than 70 years. Monarez was serving as acting CDC director when Trump announced her nomination.
Low Profile
Not generally associated with outspoken critics of the public-health establishment such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration Director Marty Makary, Monarez has a reputation as a low-key scientist who has avoided the spotlight.
One of her most recent positions before becoming acting CDC Director was director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPH-H).
“Prior to joining ARPA-H, Dr. Monarez led high-impact initiatives focusing on the ethical use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve health incomes, novel approaches to addressing affordability and accessibility in healthcare, expanding access to behavioral and mental health interventions, ending the opioid epidemic, addressing health disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality, and improving the country’s organ donation and transplantation programs,” Monarez’s CDC bio states.
Monarez has also served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and on the National Security Council.
“During that time, Monarez led efforts to improve the nation’s biomedical innovation capabilities, including combating antimicrobial resistance, expanding the use of wearables to promote patient health, ensuring personal health data privacy, and improving pandemic preparedness,” the CDC bio states.
Ongoing Reorganization
If confirmed by the Senate, Monarez will take over an agency whose performance during the COVID-19 pandemic garnered heavy criticism. The same week Monarez was nominated, the Associated Press reported at least five senior-level CDC officials had departed the agency.
In addition to that reduction in senior management, the CDC is expected to undergo a staff cut of some 2,400 employees, or 18 percent of the agency’s workforce, reported news publication, STAT.
At the beginning of the year, the CDC had more than 13,000 employees and nearly 13,000 contract workers. The center’s entire Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office was fired as part of a broader HHS reorganization.
Economic, Social Life Influence
Restoring public trust in the CDC and other health bureaucracies, in the pandemic’s wake, will be a top priority for new leadership.
“Americans learned the hard way the CDC is not just a public-health agency, it is part of the administrative state, embedded in a powerful federal bureaucracy with considerable influence over economic and social life,” wrote the American Enterprise Institute’s Brian J. Miller and M. Anthony Mills in 2023.
“Yet the CDC’s policy guidance is peculiar, neither strictly regulatory nor simply advisory. And the processes and evidence the CDC uses to make such consequential decisions are, compared with those of other administrative agencies, unusually opaque,” wrote Miller and Mills.
Monarez is a “serious scientist” and a “team player,” said McCullough Foundation President Peter A. McCullough, M.D., MPH, on Fox News.
McCullough says he met Monarez and told Fox News he believes she will focus on “bio-pharmaceutical safety, outbreak analysis, and data transparency.” Monarez will “bring the agency back to where it was 10 or 15 years ago,” McCullough said.
Calls for Reform
The CDC is a troubled agency that has gotten far out of control and needs a determined leader, says Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“I think a ‘team player’ is not what the CDC needs at this point, since the current team was responsible for the disastrous response to COVID-19 and has a long history of concealing data,” said Orient. “The CDC has been engaged in mission creep for decades, departing from its task of investigating and advising on infectious disease outbreaks.”
Monerez will need to work hard at keeping the CDC on mission, says Orient.
“Dr. Monarez’s expertise in microbiology is certainly needed, but her cited accomplishments seem more related to ‘social justice’ concerns such as maternal outcomes disparities and access to mental health care,” said Orient. “The CDC is not supposed to be involved in chronic, noninfectious disease, but if it is, the CDC’s focus should be on figuring out why we have so much chronic disease rather than on wearables to monitor certain health parameters.”
Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a position he has held since 2002.
