Biden nominates Doctor Rachel Levine as Assistant Health Secretary

by Rex Apps

President Joe Biden made history with the nomination of Doctor Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania's top health official, as his assistant secretary of health. Doctor Levine would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Doctor Levine is a graduate of Harvard University and Tulane Medical School and completed her residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, where she was also a teacher. In 2014, Doctor Levine was the top doctor at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and served on the board of Equality Pennsylvania, a statewide LGBT rights group. It was then that she was asked by Tom Wolf to co-chair his transition team for health matters.

A year after that, Wolf appointed her as Pennsylvania's physician general, the state's top doctor. Doctor Levine won state confirmation with an unanimous vote in 2015. In 2017, Governor Wolf appointed Levine to be Secretary of Health.

While serving in state government, Doctor Levine has made her way here to Erie and served as speaker at the Erie PRIDEFest on August 29, 2015, and was a presenter at the Greater Erie Alliance for Equality's Intersections of Equality held on April 30, 2016.