The White House is nominating Dr. Susan Monarez, the current acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the agency, President Donald Trump said Monday.
The move comes weeks after the White House abruptly withdrew its nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to lead the public health agency.
Monarez is a veteran of government service who was previously the deputy director of ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, an agency tasked with doing innovative, high-stakes research.
“Dr. Monarez brings decades of experience championing Innovation, Transparency, and strong Public Health Systems. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, and PostDoctoral training in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Claiming that Americans have “lost confidence in the CDC due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement,” he added, “Dr. Monarez will work closely with our GREAT Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr. Together, they will prioritize Accountability, High Standards, and Disease Prevention.”
This year is the first time the CDC director post has required Senate confirmation; in the past, the CDC director was appointed to lead the agency and didn’t need to go through a Senate hearing and vote.
Earlier this month, the White House withdrew its nomination of Weldon after White House officials privately voiced concerns about his comments expressing skepticism about vaccines. Even Kennedy, who has a long history of questioning vaccines, had concerns, the sources said.
Reactions to the choice of Monarez to lead the nation’s public health agency were mixed. Some in the public health community applauded the decision.
“Susan has a long, distinguished history as a data-driven, effective civil servant,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, wrote in an email Monday. “I am thrilled to hear she’ll be leading CDC.”
Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, described Monarez as “a very good scientist and a very capable person.”
Inglesby, who’s served as an adviser to HHS, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as to the Biden administration on the Covid-19 response, said he’s known Monarez from working with her for many years in her leadership roles in government.
“She’s very committed to public health and good government,” he said. “Politics is not her thing.”
But some CDC staffers expressed more reservations Monday, requesting anonymity out of concern for their jobs.
A main concern was that Monarez hasn’t had a major presence at the agency, with one employee saying the perception was that, as acting director, Monarez had been more of a “placeholder” than a contender for the top job. And they worried that she wouldn’t defend the agency against anticipated cuts to its funding and workforce.
“She’s been a nonentity,” one senior health official said. “I’m not sure she’s gone against the White House at all.”
The Atlanta-based agency has been reeling from layoffs, pauses in funding and communications freezes over the past two months, and it’s bracing for deeper cuts as part of anticipated Reductions in Force across the federal government – all of which have the potential to hamstring a future leader.
“If Susan is given the latitude, which means the freedom to make her own decisions based on science and evidence, the budget she needs, and if she’s able to maintain the expert workforce,” Inglesby added, “I think she will be a strong leader for the CDC.”
