Two medical professionals with Philadelphia and New Jersey ties have been named to President-elect Joe Biden's new coronavirus task force.
Biden announced early Monday that Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, would be on the panel. Emanuel is also chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Penn.
He's also served as special advisor for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration. Since 1997, he has been chair of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, also was named to the panel. Morita had served as the health commissioner for Chicago for two decades.
Biden has said the pandemic would be the first thing his administration would focus on. "Our work begins with getting COVID under control," he said in his victory speech Saturday.
His coronavirus panel is stacked with well-known names in medicine; one of its chairs is Dr. David Kessler, who once ran the FDA. There, he was known for speeding up the development of AIDS treatments as well as fighting to regulate cigarettes. Dr. Vivek Murthy, another chair, served as surgeon general for President Barack Obama.
Also on the panel: Dr. Rick Bright, who was demoted from his role in the coronavirus fight by President Donald Trump and filed a whistleblower complaint as a result.
The panel also includes Dr. Atul Gawande, a doctor and writer of best-selling books including “Better” and “Complications."
Co-chairs:
Dr. David Kessler
Dr. Vivek Murthy
Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, associate professor of internal medicine, public health, and management at Yale University and associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine.
Members:
Dr. Luciana Borio, vice president of technical staff at In-Q-Tel and senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. She also served as assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy and acting chief scientist at the FDA.
Dr. Rick Bright
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel
Dr. Atul Gawande
Dr. Celine Gounder, clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and former director for delivery for the Gates Foundation-funded Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, regents professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Ms. Loyce Pace, MPH, executive director and president of Global Health Council.
Dr. Robert Rodriguez, professor of emergency medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and doctor in the emergency department and ICU of two major trauma centers.
Dr. Eric Goosby, internationally recognized expert on infectious diseases and professor of medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and former interim Director of the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy.
