Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH has had a long career in public health, working as Commissioner of the New York City Health Department and most recently as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr Frieden went to Oberlin College, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and did his residency in internal medicine at Yale University.
The field of public health aims to improve the health of as many people as possible as rapidly as possible.
A responsive government can maintain that people are responsible for their own health while also taking public health action that changes default choices to make it easier for people to stay healthy.
Dr. Frieden on The Future of Public Health
During his career, he:
- worked to reduce rates of cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis by 80 percent in New York City
- assisted the national tuberculosis control program in India
- directed efforts to reduce smoking, including teen smoking, in New York City
- led the response to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic in the US
- has pushed for more funding to help control and treat Zika, which he says will likely “become endemic in this hemisphere”
Perhaps most importantly, and despite some criticism, Dr. Frieden led the CDC during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. An epidemic that spread to the US and other countries and for which the “CDC has undertaken the most intensive outbreak response in the agency’s history.”
Recently, he has also highlighted “two shortcomings of our health system,” that the upward trend in life expectancy that we have seen over the past 50 years (about 9 years), “is neither as rapid as it should be — we lag behind dozens of other nations – nor is it uniformly experienced by people in the United States.” And that is because “life expectancy and other key health outcomes vary greatly by race, sex, socioeconomic status, and geographic location.”
And after working to eliminate trans fats from restaurants in New York City and have chain restaurants post calorie information on their menu boards, he has continued to confront many of the more modern era epidemics, like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.
He resigned from the CDC on January 20, 2017 and was replaced by Anne Schuchat, MD, who became the became Acting Director.
For More Information on Thomas Frieden
- Twitter – @DrFrieden
- Vaccination means protection
- HPV Vaccine Works, Time to Ramp Up Vaccination Efforts
- Ten Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Became a Health Officer
- The Future of Public Health
- Public health in New York City, 2002–2007: confronting epidemics of the modern era
- CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report — United States, 2013
- Government’s role in protecting health and safety.
- World Polio Day: How Far We’ve Come, What’s Left to Do
- Thomas Frieden And The U.S. Ebola Response
- Lessons Learned After the Ebola Crisis
- Ebola in West Africa—CDC’s Role in Epidemic Detection, Control, and Prevention
- CDC’s Response to the 2014–2016 Ebola Epidemic — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone
Updated January 22, 2017