Dr. Thomas Frieden, the city's former health commissioner, has moved on to the top job at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. It's our loss and the Obama administration's and nation's gain.
For Frieden, following in a long tradition of great health commissioners, has left a lasting imprint on the history of public health in New York.
He has taken on the tobacco industry and, when necessary, food, restaurant and medical interests. His unwavering devotion to public health has often placed him at the center of controversy.
Frieden, at 48, can look back at a long career tackling the toughest health issues. He fought to ban smoking in restaurants and bars when many insisted it couldn't be done. Under his leadership, the department made HIV testing part of medical exams and his agency passed out more than 35 million condoms a year.
Mayor Bloomberg deserves credit for appointing Frieden to the top health job in New York.
An expert on infectious diseases, Frieden, early in his career, worked with then New York Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to battle drug-resistant tuberculosis. They ultimately managed to reduce certain types of TB by 80 percent. Hamburg is Obama's choice to head the Food and Drug Administration. So New York's Health Department is obviously a great training ground for national health leaders.
In the late 1990s, Frieden journeyed to India to help build a public health system and set up a TB control program that saved an estimated 1 million lives. In recent years, Frieden focused much of his attention on prevention. He prohibited the use of cooking oils with trans-fats in restaurants, required chain restaurants to list calorie counts prominently on menus. He has targeted food producers to limit sodium use. More recently, he pushed for all patient information from care givers to be put into a single electronic file as part of the Obama administration's effort to overhaul the health care system. .
Frieden is sure to stir controversy in his new position. Some New Yorkers complained bitterly when he began his crusade against smoking. But he won. He is aggressive, tough---and stubborn. His critics says he is often too aggressive, dictatorial in his approach to public health. Certainly, he is not a miracle man. Even now he is struggling to find the best way to stop the epidemic of flu in New York schools.
Just before Frieden left India in 2002 to take the New York job, he was asked what his top priority was. He replied: ''Tobacco, Tobacco is killing more people.'' A follow-up question: ''But have you heard of 9/11?''
His answer: ''Of course, I know about that but bio-terrorists are not going to kill more New Yorkers than tobacco is.""
If you travel to a European or Asian city, you are struck immediately by the fact that almost everybody is smoking most of the time. It's not like that in New York any more.
Frieden changed the picture drastically. The rest of the country will soon feel his influence.
