Biden’s health administration could have Md. flavor
Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein’s name keeps popping up in media speculation about who President Joe Biden might appoint to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but another Maryland public health leader also may be getting a look for a position in the administration.
Dr. Yngvild Olsen is an addiction treatment expert who currently serves as medical director of the Institutes for Behavior Resources Inc./REACH Health Services in Baltimore City, an outpatient substance use disorder treatment program.
She is also Sharfstein’s wife.
Olsen, who has worked to expand access to treatment, co-authored a book in 2019 with Sharfstein called “The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know.” More recent, Olsen served on the Biden-Harris transition team.
The pair, Harvard-trained physicians, have long resumes in public health.
Sharfstein has served as a Baltimore health commissioner, Maryland health secretary and principal deputy commissioner at the FDA in the administration of President Barack Obama. He is currently vice dean for public health practice and community engagement in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Olsen previously served as a vice president of the nonprofit that oversees behavioral health services in Baltimore, as Harford County’s deputy health officer and as medical director for Johns Hopkins Hospital’s outpatient substance use treatment services.
It’s not clear when and if either will end up in the administration. They and White House officials aren’t commenting.
For weeks, media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post said the FDA choice was down to Sharfstein and Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the FDA, which is overseeing development and authorization of
COVID-19 vaccines. But the Post reported Wednesday that Sharfstein may no longer be a candidate for the position.
With the pandemic more of a focus than addiction these days, Olsen hasn’t gotten the media attention, but several sources said she’s under consideration for a position at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, possibly in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
If either is tapped for a public health position, they would join Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Health Security.
Inglesby, who also served on the Biden-Harris transition, is on a temporary assignment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a senior adviser on the COVID-19 response.
With her 14-year-old son locked up on murder charges, Sierra Rose Hammond met the boy’s attorney to review the evidence.
An older teen allegedly pulled the trigger, but he named Hammond’s son as his accomplice. When the defense attorney played video of the older boy talking to detectives, prosecutors say, Hammond secretly held a cellphone in her lap and recorded.
She’s accused of posting the video to Instagram, and later telling her son and another man behind bars in a recorded jail call: “All rats must go.”
In a rare move, Baltimore prosecutors charged the 32-year-old mother with attempting to intimidate the key witness in the murder case against her son. She allegedly provided the witness’ name, description and date of birth to the other prisoner.
That prisoner, Justin Jeffries, apparently had means to pass her message to those who could harm the witness behind bars.
“I’m gonna send the word over there tomorrow when I throw out the trash he a rat,” Jeffries told her on a recorded jail call, according to the charging documents; he told her he would get the witness hurt or “wore out.”
A Baltimore grand jury indicted Hammond on the charges Tuesday. She faces as many as 20 years in prison.
Her son, Ky’sean Hammond, is scheduled to stand trial for murder in April. His co-defendant, the older teen, is scheduled for trial in May.
The teens, 14 and 19, are charged with fatally shooting a man downtown last summer. Police identified their victim as 28-year-old Joseph Betts.
The teens killed Betts, who was homeless, after a fight over a $1 bill, said Tony Garcia, the attorney for Ky’sean Hammond. But Garcia said the older teen pulled the trigger.
Garcia said his client has a fourth-grade education — “He’s got comprehension issues” — and he was following around the older boy who carried the gun. The attorney has questioned why prosecutors would charge Ky’sean as an adult with first-degree murder. He faces life in prison. Further, the 19-yearold was telling other men behind bars that Ky’sean was snitching, Garcia said. He said all this pushed Ky’sean’s mother to panic when he played the police interview for her on a laptop.
“She was told not to record anything. She wanted her own copy, and I told her ‘no,’ ” Garcia said. “Nobody knew she was recording ... I don’t condone it. I don’t approve of it. I would never ever allow that to happen.”
Garcia said Sierra Rose Hammond’s actions, however misguided, were intended to protect her son behind bars.
“She can’t go in and rescue him. She can’t go inside and comfort him. Instead, she took this crazy action,” he said. “I’m not trying to say it’s legal. I’m not trying to say it’s right. I’m saying that’s what she was doing; she was trying to protect her child.”
She allegedly posted her surreptitious recording to her son’s Instagram page in January, according to prosecutors. Garcia said prosecutors called him about the post, and he immediately called Hammond. She took down the video, he said, telling him someone else, a child who came with her to the law firm, actually recorded the police interview.
Police and prosecutors have been hobbled by Baltimore’s culture of “stop snitching” as they try and stem a rash of gun violence in recent years. Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has called the city the home of “stop snitching.”
A DVD circulated on the streets more than a decade ago warning people not to help police. Today, social media pages on sites such as Instagram carry threats, identify suspected police cooperators — often mistakenly — and even demand payment.
Still, such cases are uncommon. Online court records do not list Hammond’s attorney. She was arrested last month and remains held without bail.
In a recorded call from jail, Ky’sean Hammond tells an unidentified person, “Hey bro my mother got the video of Ty telling.”
She’s on the call, too. “I only recorded seven minutes of it,” said Sierra Rose Hammond, according to charging documents. “I had to keep the phone in my lap.”