Posted on 05/15/2009 12:54:18 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
President Barack Obama on Friday will name Dr. Thomas Frieden as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, administration officials told The New York Times.
Frieden has served as New York City's health commissioner for the past seven years. In that time, he spearheaded a campaign to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, boosted the number of New Yorkers getting HIV tests and helped to distribute millions of free condoms.
He will inherit a looming decision on how best to manage a swine flu outbreak, including whether or how to produce a swine flu vaccine. The virus has infected 6,673 people in 35 countries.
Health experts say the CDC needs to make immediate improvements in employee morale and organization as the Obama administration works to overhaul the national health care system.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Ping FWIW
Well...
No opinion. But, I can guess O’s track record, this guy is a tax cheat. He is probably more left than Joycelyn Elders.
Just a guess.
Jocelyn Elders did come to mind.
Democrats...
Does he also like “Eric Clapners” music, just like Joycelyn Elders?
LOL! I forgot about that.
Biography of Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH
Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH, has served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene since January 2002. One of the world’s oldest and largest public health agencies, the Department has an annual budget of $1.7 billion and more than 6,000 staff.
Dr. Frieden has worked as an epidemiologist, administrator, teacher, researcher, clinician, and community organizer. His top priorities are to strengthen systems to accurately monitor the health of New Yorkers and to use this information to work with communities to improve their health.
Because tobacco addiction is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in New York City, the Department is a staunch advocate of tobacco control. By helping people quit smoking and preventing them from starting, heart and lung disease, cancer, and other smoking-related illness can be prevented. There are now 300,000 fewer smokers in the City than in 2002, which will prevent 100,000 premature deaths in years to come.
New York City was also the first place in the United States to eliminate trans-fats from restaurants, rigorously monitor the diabetes epidemic, and require certain restaurants to post calorie information prominently. In 2006 the City launched the nation’s largest community-based Electronic Health Record project, which will give more than one million New Yorkers improved and consistent preventive care.
Stopping HIV and improving mental health diagnosis and treatment and the quality of programs that serve people with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and alcohol or drug dependence are also critical priorities. Others include reducing infant mortality, improving cancer screening, and ensuring that New Yorkers are treated effectively for hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
A leading expert in tuberculosis control, Dr. Frieden was appointed NYC Health Commissioner after working in India for 5 years, where he assisted with national tuberculosis control efforts. The Indian program has now treated more than 8 million patients and has saved more than a million lives.
Prior to his tenure in India, Dr. Frieden was instrumental in stopping the tuberculosis epidemic in New York City. He began his career at the New York City Department of Health in 1990 as a CDC Epidemiologic Intelligence Service Officer working on a wide range of health issues. During his time as Director of the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control and Assistant Commissioner from 1992-1996, New York City reduced cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis by 80%.
A graduate of Oberlin College, Dr. Frieden received degrees in Medicine and Public Health from Columbia University. He completed specialty training in Internal Medicine at Columbia and subspecialty training in Infectious Diseases at Yale University.
Combining a career of distinguished scholarship with public health action, Dr. Frieden has received numerous awards and has authored more than 150 scientific articles. He is fluent in Spanish.
C’mon. Let’s be honest. Hussein’s chief of staff told him what to do.
Sounds like a regular little health nazi who will look out for all of us peasants out there.
ping... (Thanks, Jet Jaguar!)
That was enough for me (I don't know if the air in the city is any cleaner than it was when I was there, but at least my cigarette smoke was filtered!)
But I read on....tobacco nazi, fat lord, prophylactic passer, Spanish speaker, and all around politically correct type...whatta resumee!
If the SHTF, will a political appointee be able to get the job done?
Careful with looking at this through normal political lenses.
Two things that leapt out at me were first “epidemiologist”, and that he had worked in India with TB mitigation. (Granted, saying that he had been a “community organizer” was almost a deal breaker.)
The NYC Department of Health has been heavily influenced for many years from an odd direction: The New Yorker Magazine. They had a very popular author, named Berton Roueché, who published a large number of short stories in his own “Annals of Medicine” section in the magazine, compiled into books about the “Medical Detectives”, citing somewhat fictionalized actual cases. For almost 50 years.
A combination of epidemiology and Sherlock Holmes, they are a unique and popular literary genre, which even today are attributed to the concept behind the popular TV series “House, M.D.”
The Berton Roueché books are still an entertaining read, and to be recommended, but importantly have inspired many people to take up a career in medicine, and especially, epidemiology.
But the influence they have had on the New York City Public Health Department has been enormous. As a gateway to the world, this made the NYCPHD intensely aware of contagious diseases and the city’s vulnerabilities to them.
In short, a leading epidemiologist who works for them is going to be on the ball. Since a decade ago, drug resistant Tuberculosis was seen as a primary threat to the public health, this is why he was probably sent to India to learn as much as he could.
Now epidemiologists are not your typical doctor. Their interest lies in contagious diseases, and stopping their spread. As such, they can be very authoritarian, but in a good sort of way. They are trying to stop epidemics.
In the face of an epidemic, the Public Health Service in any country can become the most authoritarian government agency in that nation. It can have close to absolute authority to stop a deadly disease—its singular focus—and national resources, including the military, can instantly be at its disposal.
Civil liberties mean nothing in the face of a dangerous contagious disease. When a few cases of Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis turned up in the US, there was no hesitation in detaining them in maximum security until they were either cured or dead—all at the direction of the health authorities. No lawyers or judges involved.
An epidemiologist is *not* someone you put in charge of tobacco or trans-fats, because they will treat it like an outbreak of Typhus. However, if you *do* have a deadly epidemic, an epidemiologist is not going to mess around, resulting in hundreds or thousands of infections. He will act.
Berton Roueché books I will recommend to start:
Eleven Blue Men
The Incurable Wound
A Man Named Hoffman
You Rock!
Cheers!
Thanks for the post.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109104254.htm
2006 NYC smoking-related deaths = ~9000
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/new-york-city-birth-rate-plunges/45536/
2005 NYC abortions = ~90,000
I don't have any reason to think abortions dropped dramatically between 2005 and 2006 (they dropped just 3% between 2004 and 2005)
Sure they are.
"Preventable" means something they are willing to legislate against (not abortion, although I consider your point well taken).
Keep in mind, too that a "smoking related death" can be painted with a pretty broad brush.
When I was in NYC in the 70s, the air was worse than any I had ever experienced (Gary, Indiana, would later take the title from NYC), and I found it ironic that the same people who complained about cigarette smoke would breathe that murk day in and day out but blame cigarettes for their pulmonary ills.
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