Senate confirms Erica Schwartz, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., as CDC director after year-long vacancy

Erica Schwartz, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., will become the 22nd director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after the full Senate voted 51-44 Wednesday to confirm her nomination, giving the agency its first Senate-confirmed leader in nearly a year.

Schwartz, 54, is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as deputy surgeon general during President Donald Trump's first term. Her earlier career included work as a Navy physician and chief medical officer for the U.S. Coast Guard, and her resume includes both medical and law degrees. Trump nominated her for the CDC post in April.

Schwartz is the third CDC nominee put forward since Trump returned to office. His first pick, Florida physician David Weldon, M.D., was withdrawn after senators raised concerns about previous statements he'd made questioning vaccine safety, according to PBS News. The administration then turned to Susan Monarez, Ph.D., who was confirmed as director last summer but ousted roughly a month later; Trump administration officials said she was not aligned with the president's agenda, while Monarez has said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured her to sign off on vaccine policy changes she believed were not supported by evidence. Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institutes of Health, has overseen the CDC in the year since.

What Schwartz inherits at CDC

Schwartz takes over an agency managing several active public health threats. The United States is in the middle of its largest measles outbreak in 35 years, and health officials are also tracking a growing outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection linked to shredded iceberg lettuce. She'll also face rising vaccine hesitancy nationally, a trend some public health researchers say has been compounded by CDC policy changes made during the agency's leadership vacuum, including a delayed hepatitis B birth-dose recommendation.

What Schwartz told senators about CDC's independence

At a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing in July, Schwartz pledged that she "will never betray the science" and promised "radical transparency" to help rebuild public trust in the agency. She stopped short, though, of committing to reverse specific CDC actions taken since Kennedy became HHS secretary: She said at the hearing that she was unaware some tobacco-prevention and vaccination-promotion programs had been curtailed, and she declined to commit to removing a CDC webpage that suggests a link between childhood vaccines and autism, saying she had not seen the page, though she agreed existing evidence does not support such a link. The National Public Health Coalition, a group of current and former CDC employees, said in a statement that "the public needed to hear clear commitments about how she would protect CDC guidance from political pressure" and that Schwartz's answers were "incomplete, vague, or missing."

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an emailed statement to KFF Health News that Schwartz "has dedicated her career to protecting the health of the American people" and that "the president nominated her because of that exemplary record."

Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., who had pressed Schwartz during the hearing on her independence from Kennedy, ultimately voted to confirm her after multiple conversations with HHS officials about removing the vaccine-autism claims from the CDC’s website and making personnel changes at the agency.