Trump administration expected to go outside CDC for acting director

The Trump administration is expected to tap Susan Coller Monarez, the deputy director of a federal health research agency, to serve as the acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, multiple health officials tell CBS News. 

Picking Monarez would close an unprecedented leadership gap atop the CDC, which is tasked with tracking and responding to a myriad of emerging diseases and health emergencies. Other health agencies have also been operating without acting heads. 

Monarez is an unconventional pick to serve as the acting head of the CDC. Past directors in recent history have been medical doctors, while Monarez has a PhD. Acting heads were previously chosen from within the Atlanta-based agency, often from the ranks of career civil servants familiar with the CDC’s wide-ranging work.

Until now, Monarez has been working as the deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which was created in 2022 to speed the pace of some federal biomedical research projects outside of the National Institutes of Health.

Monarez has served in various posts in the federal government over the years. She worked in the White House’s science and technology office under President Obama and at the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.

In the agency’s line of succession, Dr. Nirav Shah had been expected to be next in line to lead the CDC in the event of the director’s vacancy. 

As the CDC’s principal deputy director, Shah had been closely involved in several of the agency’s most public responses, including fielding questions at regular press briefings on the unprecedented bird flu outbreak this past year. He was picked for the role in 2023 by a previous director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Another CDC civil servant who had been seen as a possible acting head of the agency had been Dr. Deb Houry. Currently the agency’s chief medical officer, Houry had been tasked with leading the transition team’s meetings with the incoming administration. She has worked at the CDC for a decade

President Trump has picked former Congressman David Weldon to serve as his CDC director. 

Previous directors have been able to start soon after they were picked. But under a law passed by Congress in 2022, Weldon will need to be confirmed by the Senate before starting in the position.