By Angela Knudson
May 25, 2009

President Barack Obama appointed Dr. Thomas Frieden as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on May 15. Frieden, currently Commissioner of New York City Health Department, will begin his work in early June.

Frieden is well prepared to take on such a large role. While leading New York’s public health department for the past 7 ½ years, Frieden helped to expand labeling of unhealthy ingredients in food, ban smoking in restaurants and bars, and developed electronic records in doctor’s offices. He has been at the forefront of addressing important issues, including diet and lack of exercise, and smoking. He, along with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, worked together to ban harmful transfats in New York City restaurants.

Frieden has been very active in the fight against cancer, obesity, heart disease, and infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. With MD and MPH degrees from Columbia University and infectious disease training at Yale University, Frieden worked for the CDC from 1990 to 2002. As an Epidemiologic Intelligence Service Officer, he studied multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and moved to India for five years where he helped the government establish a tuberculosis control program, which to date has saved over one million lives.

As an expert in preparedness and response to health emergencies, Frieden and his team reacted well to plague, anthrax, and more recently, H1N1 influenza. Best known for his advocacy work in government action in preventive medicine, President Obama called Frieden a “leader in the fight for healthcare reform, and his experiences confronting public health challenges in our country and abroad will be essential in his new role.” President Obama has pledged to not let ideology and politics influence science and medicine, allowing Frieden to focus on promoting public health and monitoring and controlling disease outbreaks.