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Health Influencer 50

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Carrie Gavit

1. Dr. Anthony Fauci

October 26, 2020 By Carrie Gavit Leave a Comment

1. Dr. Anthony Fauci

Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force

The tragic coronavirus pandemic that has engulfed the world may have made public-health authorities into household names, but Dr. Anthony Fauci was recognized as the country’s leading champion of sound public-health advice long before the current outbreak.

Fauci is now in his 36th year as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The role has seen him advise multiple U.S. presidents through crises ranging from anthrax and SARS to MERS and Ebola. 

Those who have served alongside him say he’s by far the most effective communicator the government has, not to mention one of its finest public servants. He has proved himself able to handle nearly any media appearance; members of the media and the public alike trust him to give sound advice. 

But President Donald Trump? That’s another story. Consider this past summer’s effort by the Trump administration to malign and marginalize Fauci, despite the fact that he’s the White House’s own coronavirus adviser. 

Actions included the publication of a hostile USA Today op-ed by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro; a Facebook post by Trump aide Dan Scavino that caricatured the immunologist as a “Dr. Faucet” who leaks his disagreements; the leak of a bulleted list of the times he “has been wrong” that was supplied to reporters (and that some outlets described as “opposition research” on a political opponent); and regular Twitter critiques by Trump himself, many of which accused him of misleading the country.

To be sure, Fauci isn’t always right — he initially downplayed the value of masks, for instance. But he tells it like it is, an approach that has sometimes put him at odds with the president. They contradicted each other around vaccine arrival timelines (Fauci: 2021; Trump: by Election Day) and coronavirus longevity (Fauci: It will probably never go away entirely; Trump: The virus will “disappear”). In late July, Trump called Fauci an “alarmist,” to which Fauci responded, “I consider myself more of a realist.” 

While those disagreements have come to a head, Fauci has never gotten flustered, whether in September’s Senate hearings on the coronavirus response or in any number of heated conversations. And there have been plenty of them, as the U.S. death toll from the virus has surpassed an unfathomable 225,000. 

The latest controversy around Fauci involves whether the American public will be able to trust a potential coronavirus vaccine. This most recent contretemps surfaced when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s stated vaccine deadline of November 1 raised concerns that the White House was pressuring regulators to get a shot to market ahead of Election Day.

Like clockwork, there was Fauci on CNN, reassuring viewers that any approval of a COVID-19 vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration won’t be motivated by politics.

He’s cool, calm and collected — as one would hope and expect the country’s top infectious-disease expert to be. And he’s Exhibit A that, if the country is to effectively combat this crisis, whoever’s in the White House come 2021 must do a better job of trusting in and deferring to the public-health authorities.

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Filed Under: Profiles 2020

31. Kym White

October 26, 2020 By Carrie Gavit Leave a Comment

kym white

SVP and chief comms officer, CVS Health

For the full profile on Kym White, click here.

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Filed Under: Profiles 2020

34. Alex Gorsky

October 26, 2020 By Carrie Gavit Leave a Comment

34. Alex Gorsky

CEO, Johnson & Johnson

In September, Johnson & Johnson said it was starting large-scale Phase 3 trials of its potential coronavirus vaccine. J&J wasn’t the first to reach that benchmark, but it did have an advantage over rivals: Its potential treatment, made with the same technology as its experimental Ebola vaccine, requires only one dose.

As leader of the world’s largest drug company, Gorsky is also taking responsibility for making sure the public can trust that a coronavirus treatment has been approved without political interference. Amid growing fears that the Trump administration would rush a vaccine to the public, Gorsky was one of the handful of pharmaceutical executives who pledged that their companies would use only the highest ethical and scientific standards to verify the efficacy of a potential vaccine. 

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Filed Under: Profiles 2020

33. Dr. Amy Acton

October 26, 2020 By Carrie Gavit Leave a Comment

33. Dr. Amy Acton

Director, KIND Columbus and former director of the state of Ohio’s Department of Health

While many were surprised by the state of Ohio’s fast, proactive response to the arrival of COVID-19, those who know Dr. Amy Acton certainly weren’t.

Tapped as the director of the state’s Department of Health, she advised Governor Mike DeWine. In the process, she quickly became the trusted face of the crisis for people inside and outside Ohio, and even a star. 

People bought bobbleheads and candles bearing her likeness as well as “Save Us, Dr. Acton” T-shirts. While other states were still scratching their heads, Acton and DeWine earned kudos for swiftly implementing prevention policies.

But as the political battles around COVID shutdowns intensified, there was also intense criticism — some of it anti-Semitic. Republicans, for their part, called her “Dr. Doom.” 

She stepped down three months into the crisis and is now director of Kind Columbus, dedicated to spreading words and actions of kindness as a defining value. 

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Filed Under: Profiles 2020

32. Drew Altman

October 26, 2020 By Carrie Gavit Leave a Comment

32. Drew Altman

President and CEO, Kaiser Family Foundation

As he alternately covered and commented upon the nation’s descent into pandemic devastation, Kaiser Family Foundation leader Drew Altman minced few words. “Our lamentable performance is not the product of a famously fragmented, market-driven healthcare system,” he wrote in an essay published in the weekly peer-reviewed medical journal The BMJ in mid-September. “No, the disappointing U.S. response to COVID-19 has been because of a failure of policy and leadership.”

It’s the kind of straightforwardness and honesty Altman’s peers have come to expect over the course of a lengthy career in the realm of public health. Prior to establishing the current-day foundation in the early 1990s, Altman served as commissioner of the Department of Human Services for the state of New Jersey. Before that, he worked in the Health Care Financing Administration during the Carter Administration.

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Filed Under: Profiles 2020

28. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha

October 26, 2020 By Carrie Gavit Leave a Comment

28. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha

Founder and director, Michigan State University Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, commonly known as Dr. Mona, has advocacy in her blood. Born in Sheffield, England, her parents were Iraqi scientists and dissidents who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime before eventually settling in Michigan. A pediatrician, public health advocate and professor at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Hanna-Attisha caused a public outcry when she exposed the Flint, Michigan, water crisis in 2015. 

Because of the public health implications, she risked her career and published her findings before they had been scientifically peer reviewed. She founded the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, a partnership between Hurley Medical Center and Michigan State University, to mitigate the impact of the crisis on Flint children. 

And when the COVID-19 outbreak began this year, Hanna-Attisha was at the forefront to explain how the virus was affecting the community in Flint. The well-respected doctor also described her own battle with COVID-19 after contracting the disease herself, one of the first high-profile doctors to discuss a personal battle.

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Filed Under: Profiles 2020

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