The president of the United States, Donald Trump, appointed this Thursday Erica Schwartz, who was deputy director general of Public Health in his first Administration, as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in its English acronym). In a post on his social media, Trump described Schwartz, a military medical veteran, as “incredibly talented.” “She’s a STAR!” he stressed with his usual emphatic capital letters and at the same time announced the nomination of Sean Slovenski as deputy director. If Schwartz receives Senate confirmation, he will become the agency’s fourth head in just over a year.
The CDC, based in Atlanta, is one of the dozen agencies that depend on the Department of Health, and is in charge of protecting Americans from preventable health threats, such as the coronavirus, when it served as a roadmap to establish recommendations and prophylaxis, as well as data on transmission and prevalence of the virus and its variants. But that determining role has turned into anxiety and instability since Trump assumed the presidency for the second time, in January 2025, with a succession of mostly interim bosses.
The agency is under the supervision of the , who had promised not to modify the national vaccination schedule. However, shortly after taking office, Kennedy, a conspicuous anti-vaccine, announced his intention to challenge the childhood vaccination schedule with a substantial revision of immunization recommendations. A federal judge temporarily suspended some of those initiatives in March.
The Trump Administration’s first choice to lead the CDC was former Florida Congressman David Weldon; However, his Senate confirmation hearing, scheduled for March 2025, was canceled an hour before it was to begin. At the time, Weldon, who is a doctor by profession, said he had been informed that there were not enough senators willing to vote in his favor.
Next, it was the turn of Susan Monarez, who served as acting director of the CDC. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but was removed in less than a month for not sharing the same line of action on Kennedy’s vaccination policy.
Several key members of the CDC’s scientific committee resigned in protest, saying Monarez’s ouster dashed their hopes that an agency director could safeguard the CDC’s scientific research and health recommendations from political interference. Since then, there has been a constant back-and-forth at the top of the agency, with the temporary position of acting director passing from one official to another. The director of the National Institutes of Health, , has been in charge of overseeing the CDC for the past few weeks.
During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, Kennedy called the new team at the helm of the CDC extraordinary. “I think this new team will really be able to revolutionize the CDC and get it back on track,” he said.
Schwartz’s nomination comes as Casey Means — Trump’s pick for another key health care role, U.S. Surgeon General — has struggled to win confirmation. The stalemate over Means’ nomination — after appearing at a confirmation hearing in February — reflects the skepticism that lawmakers from both parties have expressed about the direction Kennedy has taken for his department.
Under his leadership, the CDC has undergone sweeping changes, including mass layoffs and a restructuring that he says helped reduce “bureaucratic sprawl.” Kennedy has become the target of criticism from scientists. Last year, it canceled the financing of 22 projects for the development of vaccines, an investment of 500 million to develop drugs based on messenger RNA that could reach the entire world.
Schwartz worked for 24 years in the Commissioned Officer Corps of the United States Public Health Service, and has a degree in Medicine from Brown University and a law degree from Maryland University.
