One of the world’s foremost public health institutions finally has a Senate-confirmed, permanent director, nearly a year after its previous director was ousted just 27 days into the job.

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now being led by Erica Schwartz, MD, MPH, JD. She is a former United States Deputy Surgeon General and Navy veteran; she becomes the second Black American to lead the esteemed agency, and the first Black woman.

Susan Monarez, the aforementioned former director who lasted just 27 days this tenure, was removed from the position following a disagreement with the administration.

The disagreement reportedly stemmed from being asked to make actions Monarez was uncomfortable with fulfilling, such as changing vaccine schedule recommendations without scientific backing and firing vaccine scientists without clear cause.

Then-senator Markwayne Mullin, now the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, refuted that claim, saying that a recording of Monarez’s conversation with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. showed that her dismissal was due to transparency issues with leadership.

When being sworn in, Kennedy sang praises for Monarez, saying “Dr. Monarez is a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials.”

Following her dismissal, the CDC was led by interim directors Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary for Health and Human Services, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the current acting director of the National Institutes of Health.

Now, Schwartz takes the helm of the agency that reports to Kennedy, a controversial figure in American public health beloved by some for championing “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA), but regarded by others as vaccine-denier whose rhetoric has been harmful by instilling distrust in public health.

Schwartz, who was officially sworn in on Aug. 5, is approaching her third week as director. Many are watching to see what she may do if faced with similar pressures to make decisions by the Trump administration.

Just a few days after being confirmed by the Senate for her new role, President Trump signed an executive order that urges medical practitioners to break up when children receive vaccines into staggered visits — specifically the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) — rather than at the same time as is standard practice today.

The general belief is that this move comes as the Trump administration has made identifying and stifling the cause of autism a priority — and has declared vaccines not to be out of the question, despite longstanding affirmations from experts saying there exists no hard evidence linking the two and a large majority of the scientific community rebuking the notion.

The CDC’s website today reads “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism,” adding that “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities” and “HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician himself, remarked about the executive order, calling it “stupid policy” according to ABC.

“Let’s just take it from the perspective of the parent… why this is just a stupid thing to do. Now, instead of your child getting two shots, she has to get six shots. Instead of you missing work to take your child to the doctor two times, you’re doing it six times. And instead of the insurance company paying for two visits, it’s now paying for six visits,” he said in an interview.

Some public health officials are worried the executive order adds more distrust towards vaccines, which is having real-world consequences. Following a near-eradication of measles, the disease has made a comeback in recent years. In 2025, the CDC reported 2,289 cases of measles, with 93 percent of those cases coming from unvaccinated individuals.

In 2026, the U.S. has already surpassed its 2025 total case numbers, currently sitting at 2,777 cases with over four months of the year left to go. Both years are much higher than previous recent years.

Aside from a few standalone years in 2014 and 2019, where measles cases totaled 667 and 1274, respectively, measles cases had largely been kept to a few dozen to low hundreds in number.

It should also be noted, however, that vaccine hesitancy and mistrust vary by vaccine, with apathy towards a now-normalized COVID as a seasonal disease driving percentages of Americans likely to get an updated COVID shot being different from hesitancy of vaccinating children with the MMR vaccine.

Nonetheless, Kennedy’s message of MAHA and the questioning of experts is a theme that continues to resonate with many who feel like the experts have failed them. This distrust has, in part, been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a large swath of Americans disapproving of how the pandemic was handled — largely with mask mandates and vaccine requirements by many organizations.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s decision to plead the Fifth Amendment over 100 times during a hearing in late July underlined what many Americans feel to be an indication of wrongdoing by public health officials. Fauci, who received a Presidential Commendation from Trump in his first term for spearheading Operation Warp Speed, which helped develop a COVID vaccine at record-breaking speeds, has since turned into one of the most polarized figures in the country today; supporters commend the doctor for leading efforts in uncharted waters of the pandemic, while critics allege that he mishandled the pandemic and has engaged in cover-ups.

Thus far, Schwartz has not publicly commented specifically on the executive order.

In her first all-hands meeting last week, however, STAT News reports that she reiterated what she said during her confirmation hearings: she is willing to push back on anyone and anything.

“If I’m confirmed as a CDC director, the nation’s health and well-being will take primacy, and I will never compromise on that,” Schwartz said at her hearing, according to the Scientific American.

CNN reports that she also acknowledged efforts to reduce the federal government workforce caused interruptions in programs, and is committed to learning about the state of affairs to make the best decisions moving forward.

As the nation continues to grow more polarized on public health experts, Schwartz’s leadership will be that much more important in restoring public trust, both in the agencies that lead public health issues, which critics of Trump and Kennedy have been turned off from, and in the personnel behind those agencies that many MAHA supporters have lost.

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