DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — The new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped by the agency’s headquarters in the Atlanta metro Tuesday morning to meet with staff.
Dr. Mandy Cohen, a former North Carolina official, was named the new director on June 16, replacing Dr. Rochelle Walensky who announced her resignation in early May.
Tuesday was Cohen’s first day on the job, taking over as director of the public health agency.
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Cohen was sworn in to take over the CDC on Monday. Tuesday morning, Channel 2′s Steve Gehlbach was at the agency’s DeKalb campus to ask her what she wants to achieve first.
The new director told Gehlbach that her first priority was to meet everyone and get up to speed on everything.
There are 9,000 CDC employees in Atlanta and another 14,000 worldwide.
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“They’ve been doing a lot of good work, but have a lot of work left to do,” Cohen told Channel 2 Action News.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cohen worked as the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the state of North Carolina. Before that, she worked under President Barack Obama in the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
As the new CDC director, Cohen said protecting the health of Americans was her priority.
“One [priority] is making sure we are prepared and ready for this fall and winter when we know respiratory illnesses get worse,” Cohen told Channel 2 Action News. “We want to make sure we are prepared, that we have vaccines, that we have medicines, we have tests.”
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Cohen is a medical doctor and internist with degrees from both Yale and Harvard Universities but does not have experience in infectious diseases.
At a time when the CDC is facing more political pressure and a plunging public approval rating, she brings leadership in public health and experience dealing with Washington.
Cohen said that will help her navigate her next steps of coordinating health emergency responses between state and federal actors.
“So that allows her to know how to really navigate federal and state government and how do we implement things,” Dr. Debra Houry said. “So taking the science and evidence and implement it into things that work.”
However, Cohen has been criticized for her pandemic responses back home.
Six Republican senators said she handled COVID-19 with arbitrary decisions on masking and lockdowns while being a strong supporter of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
While Cohen does not need a confirmation process to be CDC director, she’ll need Senate approval starting in 2025, when the next presidential term starts.
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