New York City public health commissioner Thomas Frieden is Barack Obama’s pick to run for the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC director is not a Senate confirmed position so Frieden can start work next month, not in five years.
The New York Times’ Gardiner Harris and Anemona Hartocollis take a look at Frieden’s seven years as NYC public health head, all under the Michael Bloomberg administration. Frieden’s best known for banning tobacco from NYC restaurants and bars and it’s interesting how the Times frames this action: "Dr. Frieden has a history of focusing on health threats that endanger large numbers of people, sometimes at the expense of more popular causes. This put him in marked opposition to the Bush administration, which spent more than $50 billion on bioterrorism initiatives and paid far less attention to problems like smoking."
This is strong praise: Frieden is not afraid to put on the backburner the issue causing the most public fear so he can work on an issue that causes the most public harm. A far-sighted approach will be necessary to overhaul CDC, which is under the Dept. of Health and Human Services. The agency went through a bureaucratic realignment (read: privatization, privatization, privatization) that backfired in the Bush administration, incensing career agency scientists.-MB