Biden Picks Rachel Levine as Assistant Health Secretary
President Biden has tapped Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary of health for the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine, who has served as the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health since 2017, would become the first openly transgender government official to be confirmed by the senate.
After four years of living under an anti-trans executive office and facing the consistent reversals of many transgender health protections, this pick comes as a direct reflection of Biden’s commitment to the representation of LGBTQ individuals in the United States government.
After graduating from Harvard College and Tulane University School of Medicine, Dr. Levine worked as a pediatrician specializing in youth with eating disorders. In 2015, she became the Pennsylvania Physician General and focused her work on the opioid crisis. She ordered law enforcement officials to carry the medication naloxone to prevent overdose deaths.
More recently, Levine has been widely praised for her response to COVID-19 in Pennsylvania. Although facing many hateful attacks on her identity, she frequently urged the public to “stay calm, stay alert, stay safe” in the early months of the pandemic. In a tweet from PA Governor Tom Wolf, the governor praises Levine’s leadership.
“Dr. Levine has been a wise, calm, and dedicated partner during this pandemic, and I couldn’t be prouder of the tireless work she’s done to serve Pennsylvanians. She will be missed, but I know she will be a tremendous leader at @HHSGov.” Her expertise and previous successes ensure that Levine is deeply qualified as Biden’s pick for assistant secretary of health.
Yet Biden’s pick is also a historic one, and one that has and will continue to inspire thousands of LGBTQ people who are too often forgotten in the fight for representation in the federal government. The contrast between the Trump presidency and the Biden presidency is already clear, even on day two.
Trump spent his last few days in office stripping nondiscrimination laws from LGBTQ+ people, while Biden began to restore the belief within the community that representation and protection may be not as unattainable as they were once thought to be. With Dr. Rachel Levine tapped as assistant health secretary, many hope a new age in American politics will soon begin, in which all Americans have a voice and the protections that were taken from transgender people are reinstated and expanded upon greatly.
