Trump picks Erica Schwartz as next head of CDC

US President Donald Trump has named Erica Schwartz to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A Coast Guard rear admiral, Schwartz served as Trump's deputy surgeon general during his first administration. The CDC had gone months without a Senate-confirmed director after the last leader, Susan Monarez, was ousted. "It is my honour to nominate the incredibly talented Dr Erica Schwartz, MD, JD, MPH, as my Director of the CDC," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "She is a star!" Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has been overseeing the CDC on an interim basis since Monarez left. Monarez was ousted in September after she clashed with Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his vaccine policies. Monarez wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that she was fired because she refused to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a new advisory panel Kennedy had placed several vaccine sceptics on. Schwartz worked for 24 years in the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service, and has a medical degree from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Maryland. She left her government work after Trump's first term, wh