Reporting from Washington -- President Barack Obama today named Dr. Thomas Frieden, currently commissioner of the New York City Health Department, to serve as director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Rich Besser, who has served as an unusually high-profile acting CDC director throughout weeks of government response to the emergence of a new strain of flu, will stay to run the Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response, which he has overseen for four years, the White House said today.
"America relies on a strong public health system, and the work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is critical to our mission to preserve and protect the health and safety of our citizens,'' Obama said in a statement issued this morning.
Calling Frieden "an expert in preparedness and response to health emergencies,'' the president said that the New York health commissioner "has been at the forefront of the fight against heart disease, cancer and obesity, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS, and in the establishment of electronic health records'' as well as a "leader'' care in health reform.
"His experiences confronting public health challenges in our country and abroad will be essential in this new role,'' Obama said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the president also praised Besser for his handling of the H1N1 flu, which in several weeks has spread from 20 known cases inside the United States to today's CDC-reported count of 4,298 confirmed or probable cases in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Three deaths in the U.S. also have been attributed to the disease.
Frieden will start in June, the White House said.
Frieden has run one of the nation's largest public health agencies, in New York, since January 2002. The White House credits him with leading efforts to reduce smoking, increase cancer screening and combat AIDS.
Frieden had served at the CDC from 1990 to 2002. In the early 1990s, as an Epidemiologic Intelligence Service Officer, he investigated issues such as a spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis, according to the White House.
He holds medical and public health from Columbia University and completed infectious disease training at Yale University and has written more than 200 scientific articles.