Levine tapped as assistant health secretary
President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leaving her poised to become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Gov. Tom Wolf, who offered Dr. Levine “heartfelt congratulations” on Tuesday, said he would name her replacement later this week.
A pediatrician and former Pennsylvania physician general, the 63-year-old Dr. Levine was appointed to her current post by Mr. Wolf in 2017, making her one of the few transgender people serving in elected or appointed positions nationwide. She won confirmation by the Republican-majority Pennsylvania Senate and, like health secretaries across the country, was thrust into the spotlight as the public face of the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Reviews of her tenure are likely to be mixed and passionate. The onslaught of COVID-19 was followed by lockdowns for schools and restrictions for businesses as officials attempted to slow the spread of the deadly virus, commerce stalled and the jobless rate climbed.
Dr. Levine is leaving amid a lumbering rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in a state that has no central registry for the shots and where pharmacies
and hospitals compete to register people for the inoculations — each with different eligibility criteria.
“It’s the biggest debacle the state has ever done,” Shawn Nairn, owner of Acorx Pharmacy in Carnegie, said about the rollout. “From the provider perspective, it’s a mess.”
Dr. Levine’s potential new boss seems to be impressed with how she handled the difficult role and appreciates the experience she will add to his administration.
“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”
Strong work ethic
Dr. Levine, a native of the Boston suburb of Wakefield, Mass., and the daughter of two attorneys, is a graduate of Harvard College and Tulane Medical School whose nickname during her residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York was “Torpedo” for her work ethic. “I have the capacity to work really hard,” she said in a 2017 interview with the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania.
She and her then-wife, who have since divorced, moved to Central Pennsylvania from Manhattan in 1993 in what she called the “biggest transition in life.” The couple, who were married just before Dr. Levine finished medical school, are parents of a son and daughter.
From age 5 or 6, Dr. Levine said she felt something was “different with me,” adding “gender was like a splinter in my brain. I knew that something was off. I really felt that I was a young girl, young woman.” A heavy work schedule kept her from seeking counseling about it until she was 40 years old, she said in the 2017 interview.
She began to transition to female dress and appearance while working as a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, she said.
Dr. Levine, who played football and hockey in high school, taught at the Penn State College of Medicine and saw patients there and later at Hershey Medical Center, where she worked for 19 years in adolescent medicine. In 2015, she accepted Mr. Wolf’s invitation to become physician general of Pennsylvania, an opportunity she said in the 2017 interview “just dropped out of the sky.”
She considers the signing of standing physician orders in 2015 to allow first responders and the general public access to the narcotic overdose antidote naloxone without a prescription — saving the lives of at least 2,300 people who would’ve otherwise died — as among her biggest achievements.
Another signature achievement, she said, was her work on LGBT issues, which she has done both as a public speaker and as part of her outreach work with government agencies.
Face of Pa.’s response
For more than 10 months now, Dr. Levine has been the face of Pennsylvania’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, holding livestreamed briefings several times a week, often ending with a patient reminder to “stay calm, stay home, stay safe.” In some quarters, she’s been hailed as a hero for addressing the state’s medical needs during the pandemic.
But, like health officials in other states, she has also faced criticism over her handling of the public health crisis. Some Republican legislators have even called for her firing or resignation.
She has also been the target of hate-filled, transphobic attacks.
After the announcement Tuesday that Dr. Levine would be departing, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, a Republican from Centre County, and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor, a Republican from York County, asked Mr. Wolf for a briefing on the state’s vaccine distribution strategy, saying the rollout lacked a clearly defined plan while overlooking those in most need of the inoculation.
Without a central registry for people who want the vaccine, the state has posted a map of places where it’s available. Mr. Nairn, from Acorx Pharmacy, like other pharmacists, said phone calls have been nonstop with people asking for the vaccine, and the calls have increased since the Health Department’s announcement Tuesday it was reducing the age for eligibility to 65 from 70 and 16 to 64 for people with chronic medical problems.
“Since reducing the age [limits], every place out there is blowing up,” he said, adding he had received 300 calls in one hour. “I’m getting a thousand calls, and I’m only probably getting 200 doses of the vaccine. It’s a very poorly thought-out plan.”
State Health Department officials on Tuesday said vaccine supplies were hampering the planned setup of mass vaccination clinics.
New federal team
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris called Dr. Levine “a remarkable public servant with the knowledge and experience to help us contain this pandemic, and protect and improve the health and well-being of the American people.”
Mr. Biden and his transition team have already begun negotiating with members of Congress, promoting speedy passage of his $1.9 trillion plan to bring the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 400,000 people in the United States, under control.
The goal is to enlist federal emergency personnel to run mass vaccination centers and provide 100 million immunization shots in the new administration’s first 100 days while using government spending to stimulate the pandemic-hammered economy.
Dr. Levine joins Mr. Biden’s nominee for health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, a Latino politician who rose from humble beginnings to serve in Congress and as California’s attorney general.
Businessman Jeff Zients is Mr. Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator, while the president-elect picked infectious-disease specialist Rochelle Walensky to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vivek Murthy as surgeon general and Yale epidemiologist Marcella Nunez-Smith to head a working group to ensure fair and equitable distribution of vaccines and treatments.
The government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, will also work closely with the Biden administration.
A transition official said Tuesday that Dawn O’Connell will serve as senior counselor for coronavirus response to the health and human services secretary. She most recently served as director of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and was the senior counselor and deputy chief of staff to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell during the Obama administration.