CDC Director Passes Torch to Dr. Cohen

Dr. Rochelle Walensky will soon pass the directorship of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to Dr. Mandy Cohen, in a not-so-unusual line of Jewish appointees such as Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, Dr. Tom Friedan, Dr. Richard Besser (acting), and Dr. Anne Schuchat (CDC deputy director).

After the recent White House announcement, Cohen was featured in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution clad in a red scoop neck sweater wearing a singular Chai necklace. Religion aside, Cohen, 44, has held several high-profile government jobs, most recently as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 until last year.

Walensky, 54, who will exit the post on June 30, announced her resignation while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Atlanta as a college commencement speaker. Gracious and poised, Walensky appeared last spring for the Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta at The Temple on Peachtree where she spoke of consulting her rabbi often and her very difficult role as the face of COVID.

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Cohen will have her work cut out for her as Walensky recently boldly revealed CDC organizational flaws in public mistakes from testing to data to communications, and the need for more self-scrutiny.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the outgoing director of the CDC, will be replaced by Dr. Mandy Cohen.

Mandy Cohen was raised in Baldwin Hamlet, Hempstead, N.Y., by an emergency room nurse practitioner (mother) and a junior high guidance counselor (father) in the New York City School system. She earned a bachelor’s degree in policy and analysis from Cornell University, then her medical degree from Yale University in 2005, and a graduate degree from the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

After her residency in Boston, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked in a variety of roles in veteran’s and women’s services, and with Doctors for Obama. In 2013, she was hired as a senior adviser by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which led to roles in Children’s Healthcare Insurance Programs, and the federally facilitated Marketplace. In 2014, while in the last trimester of pregnancy, she advocated in front of Congress for maternity coverage in the Affordable Care Act. At the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, in 2017, she oversaw 16,000 employees and dealt with crises like the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. She was credited with reducing costs and improving public health, and declines in overdose deaths in a wide swath of projects. In 2020, the Raleigh Observer named her “Tarheel of the Year.”

Many public officials like Cohen who navigated and served by using day-to-day data in unchartered pandemic waters were often deciding on and defending some controversial topics like school closures, the efficacy of face masks, teacher safety, colleges resuming in-person classes, stay-at-home orders, troubling metrics, activating testing sites, dealing with former President Trump’s tweets, and protocols in nursing homes.

The David J. Sencer CDC Museum at the Edward R. Roybal campus, the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Mandy Krauthamer added her Cohen surname when she married Samuel Cohen, a health care regulatory attorney from Philadelphia. The two met in Boston while he was attending Harvard Law School. They have two daughters. The family belongs to (Conservative) Beth Meyer Synagogue in Raleigh, and she was recognized by the local Jewish Federation as a Lion of Judah in 2018.

No statement has been made yet if the family plans to relocate to Atlanta.

Suffice it to say that Cohen is more qualified than most of her predecessors because of her background in public health and government agencies and is no “shrinking stethoscope” when it comes to making decisions and the use of her academia to make practical changes.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper referred to Cohen as “brilliant, talented and a battle tested leader.”

She will serve as a President Joe Biden appointee.