Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed Dr. Alister Martin to lead New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
In his new role, Martin will oversee an agency with more than 7,000 employees and an annual budget of $1.6 billion. His department is responsible for managing public health emergencies in the city as well as providing clinic services. It also conducts inspections of child care centers and restaurants and issues birth and death certificates.
Martin said he will focus on making health care and treatment more affordable for New Yorkers.
“We are going to make sure that when a family walks into a health center, they can walk out not just healthier, but more financially stable,” Martin said at a press conference Saturday afternoon.
Health outcomes vary by community in the five boroughs, with residents of the city’s lowest-income communities — predominantly Black and Latino New Yorkers — experiencing disproportionate rates of chronic and preventable illness, including heart disease, diabetes and asthma, according to city data.
Martin also referenced the threat of spiking insurance rates amid Medicaid cutbacks and the expiration of subsidies tied to the Affordable Care Act.
“We’re going to make sure that the health insurance coverage losses that are coming potentially from the federal government’s cutbacks, that we keep people insured, we keep people housed, and we keep people whole,” he said.
Martin is an emergency physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and previously served as a White House fellow and on an advisory panel on outreach to low-income communities with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also founded a program known as Vot-ER that helped emergency room patients register to vote.
Mamdani praised Martin’s “extensive experience on the frontlines of public health as well as at the highest level of government.”
This story has been updated with new information.