Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill is bringing in a public health professional from North Carolina to serve as New Jersey Commissioner of Health.<\/p>\n
Dr. Raynard Washington, currently the director of the Public Health Department in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, will replace Acting Commissioner Jeffrey A. Brown.<\/p>\n
Before relocating to Charlotte in 2020, he served as Chief Epidemiologist and Deputy Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Health.\u00a0 He\u2019s also worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in the private sector and spent four years as an epidemiologist at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Maryland.<\/p>\n
In North Carolina, he directs nearly 1,000 public health professionals.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lifetime public servant, Dr. Washington will be essential in keeping our state healthy and safe,\u201d Sherrill said.\u00a0 \u201cAt a time when Trump and RFK Jr. are rewriting longstanding guidelines and undermining trust in medical care, it is critical New Jersey have experienced leadership to keep us healthy. Dr. Washington is exactly that type of leader, and I look forward to working with him to keep all New Jerseyans healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown became acting commissioner in April after Kaitlan Baston resigned to become the interim CEO of University Hospital in Newark.\u00a0 Baston replaced Judy Persichelli, who served from 2019 to 2023 and was in office for the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0 Gov. Phil Murphy\u2019s first health commissioner, Shereef Enanhal, also left to run University Hospital and later became Undersecretary for Veterans Affairs for Health.<\/p>\n
Washington pledged to help protect public health in New Jersey\u00a0 while the federal\u00a0 government is \u201cattacking our public health institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Jersey must do everything we can to protect the public\u2019s health and safety, including providing reliable medical information, based in science,\u201d Washington stated.\u00a0 \u201cI look forward to working with the Gov.-elect to lower the cost and improve access to health care, and ensure the state\u2019s public health system is prepared to respond to ongoing and emerging public health threats, while continuing its work to make good health possible for all New Jerseyans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill is bringing in a public health professional from North Carolina to serve as New Jersey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-410418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}