President-elect Joe Biden announced his coronavirus advisory board Monday morning, in an effort to jump start his administration’s efforts to effectively address the COVID pandemic spiking across the nation.
According to Roll Call, the president-elect added one more co-chair to join David A. Kessler, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and former FDA commissioner; and Dr. Vivek Murthy, surgeon general in the Obama administration.
Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of medicine at Yale University who focuses on equity in health care for various disadvantaged populations, will be the third co-chair to help focus efforts on minority and poor communities.
Per Roll Call, the other members of the advisory board are:
- Luciana Borio is a biodefense and emerging diseases expert who has served in leadership roles at the FDA and the National Security Council.
- Rick Bright is a vaccine development expert and former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority until earlier this year, when he alleges the Trump administration pushed him out.
- Ezekial Emanuel is a University of Pennsylvania oncologist and former special adviser for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He chairs the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health.
- Atul Gawande is a Harvard University professor of surgery and health policy and former HHS advisor during the Clinton administration.
- Celine Gounder is a New York University professor of medicine and expert on controlling epidemics, including tuberculosis and HIV.
- Julie Morita is executive vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and has served on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
- Michael Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and served as the Minnesota Department of Health state epidemiologist.
- Loyce Pace is the executive director and president of the Global Health Council.
- Robert Rodriguez is a professor of emergency medicine at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine.
- Eric Goosby is a professor of medicine at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine and was the founding director of the Ryan White CARE Act during the Clinton administration.
Biden opted not to name to the group a Fox News personality, a neuroradiologist and/or a public policy advisor from the conservative Hoover Institute who doesn’t have experience in public health or virology.