Voices: Assistant Secretary for HHS, Admiral Rachel Levine, MD.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Admiral Rachel Levine, MD for MedPageToday. This interview is part of an ongoing series we’ve been informally calling “heavy hitters.” (Past interviews in this series have included former NIH lead Dr. Francis Collins, Dr. Deborah Birx, Dr. Tony Fauci, and others. We have some more lined up this spring).

Admiral Levine is the 17th assistant secretary for health for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HH)S, and the head of the US Public Health Service. She is one of the few openly transgender federal government officials, and one of the first to hold an office requiring Senate confirmation.

Admiral Rachel Levine and I, courtesy of MedPage Today.

Admiral Levine has an impressive portfolio right now. I greatly enjoyed this wide-ranging conversation (which we have spliced into three nicely streamlined parts).

Left on the cutting room floor, however, was a brief discussion of Long Covid. Admiral Levine is the lead for the US federal government’s National Research Action Plan on Long COVID. Our interview happened to coincide with a planned demonstration in Washington, DC by Long Covid activists who are demanding that more be done, and quickly. I asked Admiral Levine what her message was to these activists, given that she is ostensibly their advocate on the inside of the administration. More or less her answer was that progress takes time.

Beyond that, we managed to cover a lot of ground and I hope you’ll take a look and listen. The video and transcript for each segment can be found by following the links below:

• Part 1: How HHS Plans to Fight Increases in Syphilis, Maternal Mortality.

• Part 2: How the U.S. Is Addressing the Youth Mental Health Crisis.

• Part 3: Rachel Levine of HHS: Transgender Medicine Should Be Available in Every U.S. State.

One final note: Since it was posted on MedPage Today, this interview has received some hostile attention from intolerant trolls on “X” (the site formerly known as Twitter). Honestly, the bigotry out there is a sad commentary on the world outside of my admittedly tolerant and progressive bubble. Having anticipated this, towards the end of our interview, I did ask Admiral Levine how she deals with this type of hatred in general—including from policymakers in DC that she has to work with professionally on a daily basis. Her answer impressed me. (That is in Part 3 of the interview).

I hope you find this substantive conversation as interesting and informative as I did. And, we’ll be back with more “heavy hitters” in the coming week. Whenever possible, I’ll solicit questions from premium subscribers, as we’ve done in the past.