Trump Announces Nominees for Key Health Positions
President-elect Donald Trump recently announced additional nominees for key health positions in his administration, including the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner and U.S. Surgeon General.
For the CDC, Trump selected U.S. Army veteran and former Congressman Dr. Dave Weldon, who has been a vocal critic of the agency, particularly its vaccine programs. Weldon has expressed concerns about vaccine safety and has proposed moving vaccine oversight to an independent agency outside the CDC. He also continues to promote discredited claims about vaccines causing autism, focusing in particular on the preservative thimerosal.
In 1981, he received his undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University and earned his medical degree at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine. He is a board-certified internal medicine doctor.
Dr. Weldon served in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve from 1981 to 1992 and represented Florida’s 15th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress from 1994 to 2008. He practiced as a physician in Florida after graduating from medical school; he currently practices medicine at Health First Medical Group in Malabar, FL.
Trump’s pick for FDA Commissioner is Dr. Martin Makary. Dr. Makary is a board-certified surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who is known for his criticisms of COVID-19 public health policies, including vaccine mandates. Dr. Makary has also been an outspoken advocate for addressing issues like overprescribing of drugs, chemical pesticides in food and the influence of pharmaceutical companies on government regulations.
He writes for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, Unaccountable and The Price We Pay. Dr. Makary served in leadership at the World Health Organization’s Patient Safety Program and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Currently, Dr. Makary is the Chief of Islet Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins University. He is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Medicine and a Professor, by courtesy, at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.
Dr. Makary received his medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in 1998 and his Master of Public Health from Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health in 1998. His surgical residency was at Medstar Health in 2003.
Finally, Trump nominated Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon General. Dr. Nesheiwat is a board-certified family medicine physician and current medical director at CityMd, which are urgent care centers in New York City. Dr. Nesheiwat is described as being committed to ensuring access to affordable health care and empowering individuals to take charge of their health.
Dr. Nesheiwat graduated from the University of South Florida, in 2000, and went to medical school at the American University of the Caribbean on the island of St. Maarten. She did her residency in emergency and family medicine in Arkansas, in 2009, and worked there until leaving for New York in 2012.
All of the nominees must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
