President Donald J. Trump announced Thursday that he will nominate Erica Schwartz a physician and public health official, to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which hasn’t had a full-time director since August.
Schwartz was deputy surgeon general during part of the first Trump administration and chief medical officer of the US Coast Guard prior to that. She began her career as an occupational medicine physician with the US Navy.
If confirmed by the Senate, Schwartz will take the helm of an agency mired in controversy since Trump returned to office. In addition to mass layoffs at the CDC last year, Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all members of the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—which makes recommendations on US vaccine use that have implications for insurance coverage—and appointed vaccine opponents and those lacking vaccine expertise. Last month, a federal judge halted the reconstitution of the panel and the changes it made to the federal vaccine schedule.
The CDC director position has seen frequent turnover during the past year, reflecting discord over the administration’s vaccine policy goals. In March 2025, the White House withdrew the nomination of former congressperson Dave Weldon mere hours before his confirmation hearing over fears that his antivaccine views would garner too much Senate opposition. Susan Monarez assumed the role in July 2025 but was fired less than a month later after refusing Kennedy’s demands that she preapprove vaccine recommendations. Biotech investor Jim O’Neill was then appointed acting director but was replaced in February of this year with Jay Bhattacharya, who also serves as director of the National Institutes of Health.
Schwartz, who wrote vaccination policies for the navy and has led disease surveillance work, has won early praise for her qualifications. She “possesses the medical background and public health knowledge to understand that the CDC must be guided by evidence-based science” and has “strong leadership skills,” Georges C. Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, writes in a statement.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai tells C&EN that Schwartz “is eminently qualified to restore Gold Standard Science at the CDC, from her top-notch credentials to her military service to her experience as a Deputy Surgeon General in the first Trump administration.”
Schwartz’s nomination has been interpreted by some as part of the administration’s effort to distance itself from more-controversial stances on vaccines in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections. Yet last week, HHS approved a new charter for ACIP that is seen by some as an effort to circumvent the ruling blocking Kennedy’s changes. And Houman Hemmati, an ophthalmologist who has been critical of COVID-19 vaccines, is reportedly the front-runner to be the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
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