After nearly eight months without an official director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), President Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz to head the nation’s public-health agency, he announced in an April 16 post on Truth Social.
Schwartz has spent much of her career in the military, following her father, a Naval officer, into the Navy. She graduated from Brown University’s eight-year Program in Liberal Medical Education. Schwartz then earned a master’s degree in public health and a law degree from the University of Maryland and began working in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps with the Coast Guard, where she was involved with addressing health issues related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
She became chief medical officer for the U.S. Coast Guard, where she was responsible for the unit’s clinics. In 2019, then-Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams asked her to serve as his deputy during the first Trump Administration.
“A battle-tested leader with decades of distinguished public service—including as a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service and Coast Guard—she has the expertise, credibility, and integrity to lead the CDC effectively,” wrote Adams, who has been critical of public-health leadership during Trump’s second term, in a LinkedIn post following Trump’s announcement. “If allowed to follow the science without political interference, she’ll excel.”
Schwartz now faces Senate confirmation.
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Leadership at CDC has been temporary and tumultuous during Trump’s second term. The White House withdrew Trump’s first pick to head the CDC, Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon, shortly before his confirmation hearing over concerns that he likely would not have received the required votes to be confirmed. The Administration’s next choice, Susan Monarez, served as CDC director for about four weeks until she was ousted after disagreeing with Administration officials about public-health policies, including vaccines. At a Sept. 2025 hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, she testified that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured her to dismiss vaccine officials at the agency without cause and approve changes related to immunizations without scientific evidence.
Kennedy has instituted dramatic changes to national vaccine policies for children and removed the CDC’s independent group of advisors that makes recommendations on the U.S.’s vaccine schedule, replacing them with handpicked choices who hold more vaccine-skeptical views. A judge has stayed the vaccine changes, which included no longer requiring yearly flu or COVID-19 shots for most children.
In recent weeks—ahead of the midterm elections and amid a unprecedented measles outbreak—Kennedy has toned down his anti-vaccine rhetoric, reportedly at the White House’s instruction, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Cautiously optimistic but encouraged by this pick,” Adams wrote in his post.
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