

White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients applauded her performance. Last year, she began a reorganization designed to make the agency more nimble and to improve its communications with the public.īiden, in a statement, said Walensky “leaves CDC a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans.” She started a center for forecasting and outbreak analytics and took steps to modernize data collection and analysis. She was brought in to raise morale at the CDC, to rebuild public trust in the agency and to improve its sometimes-bumbling response to the pandemic. She came with a reputation as a prominent voice on the pandemic, sometimes criticizing how the government was responding.

Walensky, previously an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, had no experience running a government health agency when she was sworn in on the first day of the Biden administration.

is an Atlanta-based federal agency charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats. The CDC, with a $12 billion budget and more than 12,000 employees. Deaths in the U.S. are at their lowest point since the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020. public health emergency will expire next week. The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, and the U.S. “I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career,” she wrote. In her letter to Biden, she expressed “mixed feelings” about the decision and didn't say exactly why she was stepping down, but said the nation is at a moment of transition as emergency declarations come to an end. Walensky, 54, has been the agency's director for a little over two years. She sent a resignation letter to President Joe Biden and announced the decision at a CDC staff meeting. Walensky's last day will be June 30, CDC officials said, and an interim director wasn’t immediately named.

Rochelle Walensky, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, submitted her resignation Friday, saying the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic was a good time to make a transition. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, submitted her resignation Friday, May 5, 2023.
