Susan Monarez, Ph.D., was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ending a roughly four-month period in which the agency did not have a permanent leader.
A microbiologist by training, Monarez was deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and has been holding down the fort as the CDC’s acting director since January. She was the administration’s second choice for the post, as initial nominee Dave Weldon, M.D., an internal medicine physician and former legislator, was pulled back in March for his controversial views on vaccines.
Monarez faced questions on similar topics during her confirmation hearing last month, when she committed to maintaining free routine vaccinations for children and said she had “not seen a causal link between vaccines and autism.”
She walked a finer line on the views of her boss, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., not outright denouncing some of his more controversial statements on conditions like measles but saying she would present the secretary with science and facts to guide his and the department’s decision-making. Of note, since that hearing, RFK Jr. has reconfigured the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and adopted an initial recommendation to the alarm of immunization researchers and major medical organizations.
As director of the CDC, she’ll be navigating those challenges and others related to sweeping workforce and budget cuts under the administration’s plan to offload longtime CDC focus areas like chronic disease to the newly created Administration for a Healthy America. Monarez also said during her confirmation hearing that she wants to tackle the agency’s credibility issue with large portions of the general public while supporting RFK Jr. and the administration’s broader Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) vision for the country.
Monarez was confirmed in a party-line 51-47 vote—reflecting Democrats’ continuing protest against the Trump administration despite perceiving the scientist and longtime civil servant as a relatively grounded nomination.
Her confirmation landed just ahead of news of a high-profile departure from the federal health department.
Vinay Prasad, M.D., director of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, as well as the agency’s chief medical and scientific officer, stepped away from the department on Tuesday. He’d been at the right hand of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., as well as the agency’s chief regulator of vaccines, gene therapies and blood products.
The departure followed a regulatory controversy around Sarepta Therapeutics’ controversial Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy Elevidys, in which the agency demanded a pause on all shipments of the drug amid several patients' deaths before partially walking back its stance on Monday.
Prasad had also become the target of criticism from conservative critics, who in recent social media posts and opinion articles described him as a “leftist saboteur” and a “Bernie Sanders acolyte in MAHA drag.”
“Dr. Prasad did not want to be a distraction to the great work of the FDA in the Trump administration and has decided to return to California and spend more time with his family,” the HHS said in a statement. “We thank him for his service and the many important reforms he was able to achieve in his time at FDA.”
The department has not yet named a permanent or interim replacement for Prasad.