Dr. Allison Arwady, who headed Chicago’s response to COVID-19, joining CDC
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The chief architect of Chicago’s COVID-19 response will begin a new role next year at the federal government’s public health agency after the former top health official for Mayor Lori Lightfoot was fired earlier this year by Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Dr. Allison Arwady, who headed the Chicago Department of Public Health, will become a director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead the agency’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
Arwady had tried to keep her job as Chicago’s Public Health commissioner under Johnson, but she was let go in August as the new mayor who took over in May removed several Lightfoot administration officials.
“She led the city’s health department during the COVID-19 pandemic and did so exceptionally,” a CDC spokesperson said. “Dr. Arwady is nationally recognized for her strong leadership and communications skills, which are pivotal in the role she will assume.”
She will begin the job in January.
Arwady’s previous post remains unfilled on a permanent basis, with Johnson having named an interim commissioner, Fikirte Wagaw, who continues to lead the department through the mayor’s first budget negotiations.
Arwady’s dismissal was one of the most prominent personnel moves Johnson has made during his first six months in office.
She became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing regular updates on the number of positive cases being reported and details about changing public health restrictions. She also oversaw the city rollout of vaccination efforts and explained how people could best protect themselves from infection.
But Arwady was also criticized in some circles for being too hasty in loosening pandemic restrictions, especially in reopening public schools. Chicago Teachers Union leaders, who supported Johnson’s bid for mayor, supported her dismissal in Chicago.
Arwady also went against activists’ demands regarding environmental permitting and mental health services.
Johnson is carrying on with his campaign promise to reopen the shuttered mental health clinics, a move Arwady opposed. His budget plan, which still will need City Council approval, calls for two “pilot” mental health clinics to be placed in existing CDPH offices while permanent clinic locations are being scouted.
Arwady pushed to expand mental health services citywide and the “Family Connects” program that provides in-home nursing visits for newborns. She also was a driving force behind an executive order on environmental justice that Lightfoot issued at the end of her term.
Arwady, a board-certified physician and pediatrician, came to the health department in 2015 as chief medical officer and was confirmed as commissioner in January 2020 — coincidentally the same month the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States. She previously worked for the CDC and assisted in the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia.
She holds degrees from Harvard, Columbia and Yale universities, according to the city health department’s website.
