Biden selects 3 UCSF doctors for COVID-19 task force

Three UC San Francisco physicians will help guide President-elect Joe Biden’s pandemic response strategy as members of his newly-announced Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.

One of these local experts, Dr. David Kessler, will serve as a co-chair of the board, which will work with health officials nationwide to create policies to stem the virus’s spread, reduce eliminate health disparities and reopen schools and businesses.

“They represent the extraordinary and relentless dedication the UCSF community has shown in meeting the challenge of the coronavirus across our patient care, research, and education efforts,” UCSF chancellor Sam Hawgood said Monday morning, in a prepared statement. “UCSF looks forward to working with President-elect Biden’s administration.”

The UCSF physicians named to the panel, unveiled by President-elect Biden’s transition team on Monday, are:

Dr. Eric Goosby, professor of clinical medicine and the director of Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy in the UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences. Known for his sense of urgency and a history of success, he was tapped by former President Barak Obama to be the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator – an ambassadorial position – heading up the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which supported HIV testing and counseling and provides antiretroviral treatment in under-resourced countries. He is also the U.N. Special Envoy on Tuberculosis, bringing to the job a combination of expertise in infectious diseases and experience running large public health response programs in the U.S. and internationally

Dr. Robert Rodriguez, professor of emergency medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine.  His recent research has focused on how President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric put Latino patients’ health at risk, by changing their perception of access to emergency care.  His team also analyzed the emotional toll that COVID-19 is taking on the nation’s front-line emergency medicine physicians, fearful due to lack of PPE and testing. He has served as a mentor for dozens of young doctors and has sought to advance the careers of underrepresented groups at all levels of medical training.

Dr. David Kessler, professor of pediatric, epidemiology and biostatistics, former dean and vice chancellor for medical affairs at UCSF as well as former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. On his watch, an FDA advisory panel declared nicotine addictive, infuriating the cigarette companies. When dean of UCSF, he nurtured the development of the state-of-the-art Mission Bay campus but was fired after increasingly bitter disputes between Kessler and top university officials about accounting practices at the medical school, a decision that shocked faculty members.  The school later apologized, saying that it had not accurately portrayed the funding situation. His 2009 book The End of Overeating, a New York Times best seller, asserts that the sugar, fat and salt in modern foods are designed to stimulate the reward pathways in the brain, conditioning us to crave more food.

The new task force — representing other former government health officials, academics, and major leaders in medicine — also includes:

·                 Vivek Murthy, MD, U.S. surgeon general during the Obama administration

·                 Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.

·                 Zeke Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia

·                 Atul Gawande, MD, a surgeon at Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a professor at Harvard Medical School and noted author. Gawande graduated from Stanford University in 1987; his wife, Kathleen Hobson, graduated from Stanford in 1988.

·                 Michael Osterholm, PhD, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis

·                 Rick Bright, MD, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority

·                 Celine Gounder, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine in New York City

·                 Julie Morita, MD, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

·                 Loyce Pace, president and executive director of the Global Health Council

·                 Luciana Borio, former director for medical and biodefense preparedness on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council

Two additional health experts will serve as advisors:

·                 Rebecca Katz, PhD, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

·                 Beth Cameron, PhD, former director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration.