Senate confirms Dr. Erica Schwartz as CDC director

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, giving the CDC its first official director in nearly a year. 

Schwartz was confirmed Wednesday by a vote of 51 to 44. The CDC has been without a Senate-confirmed director since late August 2025, when former director Susan Monarez was ousted just 29 days into the job. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya had also been serving as acting CDC director since February.

Schwartz, a retired Navy rear admiral, is a former deputy surgeon general with extensive experience overseeing the U.S. Coast Guard’s health care system. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Brown University, an M.D. from Brown University, and a law degree from the University of Maryland. She has experience responding to pandemics, including outbreaks of Ebola and H1N1, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

Schwartz will be the first Black woman to run the CDC. 

Monarez, her predecessor, testified that she was pushed out of the agency because she declined to follow Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine recommendations, which she said were not based on science. 

Schwartz enters the job amid concerns about the Ebola outbreak in Africa, and as the Trump administration faces criticism over vaccine recommendations.