Trump nominates Erica Schwartz as new CDC director

President Donald Trump nominated former Deputy Surgeon General Erica Schwartz, a physician, as director of the Centers for ​Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Schwartz is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as a deputy surgeon general during the COVID-19 pandemic in Trump's first term. Schwartz played a key role in the nation's COVID response, helping coordinate national preparedness during the first year of the pandemic.

She's nominated to take over an agency that has not had a permanent director since August when Dr. Susan Monarez was ousted.

Trump cited Schwartz's academic credentials, earning biomedical engineering and MD degrees from Brown University, and her service in the U.S. military.

"She is a STAR," Trump said in a post on Truth Social on April 16.

Trump also said he was naming health care executive Sean Slovenski, Texas health commissioner Jen Shuford and top FDA official Sara Brenner to senior CDC roles. Slovenski will serve as the CDC's deputy director and chief operating officer; Shuford will be deputy director and chief medical officer; and Brenner will be senior counselor for public health.

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has served as the CDC's acting director since mid-February and will remain in place until the new director is confirmed.

If confirmed by the Senate, Schwartz will lead the nation's top public health agency amid changes to vaccine policy under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Public health experts praised Schwartz's credentials but questioned whether she would have the autonomy to lead the agency.

"This seems like a dream pick," said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health. "The bigger question is whether she'll be allowed to do the job."

In 2025, Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, fired all 17 original members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which recommends vaccine use for adults and children. Kennedy replaced them with members whom critics have called unqualified. He's also moved to reduce the number of vaccines routinely recommended for children.

On March 16, a Massachusetts federal judge temporarily blocked HHS's reshaping of federal vaccine panel, siding with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups.

Polls have shown most voters disapprove of Kennedy's moves to overhaul the childhood vaccination schedule.

A February poll found the public’s trust in the CDC was at its lowest point, according to the KFF Poll on Health Information and Trust.

Fewer than half of poll respondents said they trust the agency a "fair amount” to give reliable vaccine information, which represented a drop of 10 percentage points since the beginning of Trump's second term. Public confidence in the agency had been on a downward trend since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Schwartz's selection is a "good pick as a person who could be CDC director under any administration," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

But he questioned whether she'll have the ability to disagree with Kennedy over vaccine policy.

"If Dr. Schwartz has to answer to RFK Jr., what's going to prevent him from trying to force his ideology on her the way he tried to do with Dr. Monarez?" Adalja said.

Contributing: Reuters