Brenda Fitzgerald, who had been on the job as director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for only six months, has resigned amid questions over her financial conflicts of interest, an administration official confirmed.
Since being appointed July 7, 2017, Fitzgerald had been criticized by lawmakers over her investments in certain healthcare companies.
Politico reported Jan. 30 that Fitzgerald bought shares in a tobacco company one month into her leadership at the CDC, an agency charged with reducing tobacco use and whose mission is to protect the nation's public health.
According to documents obtained by the publication, the tobacco stock was one of about a dozen new investments Fitzgerald had made after she took over as CDC director.
Fitzgerald's abrupt departure came two days after Alex Azar was sworn in as the new secretary of Health and Human Services — taking over the agency four months to the day after Trump's first health chief, Tom Price, resigned Sept. 29, 2017, amid a scandal involving his taxpayer-funded flights on chartered and government jets. Some lawmakers had also raised concerns about Price's investments in biopharmaceutical companies while he was a member of Congress.
"This morning Secretary Azar accepted Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald's resignation as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd said in a statement. "Dr. Fitzgerald owns certain complex financial interests that have imposed a broad recusal limiting her ability to complete all of her duties as the CDC director. Due to the nature of these financial interests, Dr. Fitzgerald could not divest from them in a definitive time period. After advising Secretary Azar of both the status of the financial interests and the scope of her recusal, Dr. Fitzgerald tendered, and the secretary accepted, her resignation."
Anne Schuchat, the CDC's principal deputy director, will serve in an acting capacity to lead the agency for the time being. She served as acting CDC director last year from January 2017 to July 2017. She previously was the director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, where she served from 2006 to 2015.
In December 2017, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Fitzgerald's financial ties to various industries were impeding her ability to run the agency.
Because of her conflicts of interest, Fitzgerald had bowed out of several hearings on Capitol Hill, in which she was called to appear before lawmakers to testify about what her agency was doing to fight opioid addiction in the U.S.
Fitzgerald sent other officials in her place to the hearings, including Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director at CDC, and Debra Houry, director of the agency's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
The now-former CDC chief acknowledged she had to recuse herself because of matters related to ongoing conflicts of interest outlined in an ethics agreement signed Sept. 7, 2017.
According to that ethics agreement, Fitzgerald held investments in a number of companies including many from the biopharmaceutical sector, such as AbbVie Inc., Amgen Inc., Baxter International Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Inc.
In a Jan. 19 response to questions, CDC spokeswoman Kate Grusich told S&P Global Market Intelligence that Fitzgerald was "actively working to address recusal obligations as soon as possible related to two financial holdings that, as noted in her ethics agreement, have complex transfer restrictions."
Fitzgerald was slated to speak in early February before several groups, including the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors and the International Society for Disease Surveillance, Grusich said.
