Headline: Rachel Levine about to become the First Elected Official to be confirmed by the Senate

Author: Alex Bowser

Pennsylvania’s State Secretary Rachel Levine has recently been nominated by President Joe Biden to be the new Assistant Secretary of Health (ASH) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which will make history for the LGBTQ+ community. 

If confirmed by the Senate,  Dr. Levine would not only become the first openly transgender government official to pass Senate confirmation but would also historically become the highest-ranking transgender federal official in America.

Levine would be running the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH), the previous ASH being Brett Giroir who served two years under the Trump administration. Due to the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, she will be handling guidelines for vaccine distributions, provide recommendations for any potential policies, and oversee the majority of the department’s public health offices.

In acknowledgment of  Levine’s extensive background in the medical field and experience,  Levine graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of science (BS) and received her medical degree from Tulane University (MD). She also trained in pediatrics from 1988 to 1993 at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan and completed a fellowship in adolescent medicine.

In a speech from 2015, she addressed her childhood, explaining how she lived with a “secret” in her youth and channeled her feelings of unease into her schoolwork, which she credits as the main reason for her ability to excel in her academic career. This feeling also drove her to enter psychiatry and help adolescents struggling with the same issues.

In 1993, she moved from New York to Pennsylvania, where she began her work for the state. She was hired as a professor at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, where she created the Penn State Hershey’s Adolescent Medicine Division and Eating Disorders Clinic. In 2015, Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf elected her to be Pennsylvania’s Physician General.

During  Levine’s time as Pennsylvania’s Physician General, she was notably involved with regulating Naloxone, an anti-overdose medication that Levine describes as “a life-saving medication that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.” She signed an order that allowed law enforcement to carry naloxone and a standing order that allowed Pennsylvanians to have access to naloxone at any local pharmacy. 

In 2017, Governor Wolf appointed Levine as the new Secretary of Health, where she was unanimously confirmed. During this time, she has continued her work on drug prevention after Wolf’s signing in 2018 of the first Opioid Disaster Declaration.

Currently, she is primarily focused on COVID issues within the state of Pennsylvania as she awaits her confirmation. She conducts the daily press briefings, leading them alongside  Wolf, and works closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s director, Peter Gaynor.

Throughout the time she’s worked with Wolf, he has praised her work and accomplishments. Just after the announcement of President Joe Biden’s nomination, Wolf described Levine as “a highly skilled and valued member of my administration.”

“She has been a wise and dedicated partner during this pandemic and throughout her career with the commonwealth,”  Wolf stated. “I couldn’t be prouder of the tireless work she’s done to serve Pennsylvanians and protect the public health.”

Levine’s tasks as the Biden Administration’s Assistant Secretary of Health have already been given; he will begin with helping develop a distribution plan for the COVID vaccine. In addition to the pressing stresses of the pandemic, she will also be charged with reversing and fixing many of Trump’s changes that occurred over the last four years.

The Office for Women’s Health and the Office of Population Affairs both saw many initiatives throughout Trump’s term that sought to rid the options involved with pro-choice initiatives. The Trump administration, for example, sought to reverse the Obamacare birth control mandate, which helped cover birth control and insure women.

One of  Levine’s first accomplishments in Pennsylvania was establishing its Office of Adolescent Health (OAH), which was also pulled from its own office and rewired into the Office of Public Affairs. Levine will be tasked with reversing this as well and maintaining the OAH at the federal level.

However, Biden’s nomination of Levine has not come without backlash. Most notably, Republican State Representative Jeff Pyle has recently been under fire for posting a “meme,” according to Pyle. Many deemed this post as transphobic, referring to Levine as “Benjamin Franklin.” Since then, Pyle has issued a formal apology, stating “I’ve learned I erred and apologize to all affected.”

Despite the apology, many believe this isn’t enough. 

Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims who is also co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus stated, “State Rep. Pyle has brought the House of Representatives into dishonor and disrepute. Until his actions are addressed, he continues to place her, and hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ+ people in the Commonwealth, at risk for further discrimination to attack.”

Pyle stated that he received “thousands of heated emails” that informed Pyle of his behavior to be both disrespectful and unacceptable. “I had no idea it would be received as poorly as it was,” Pyle writes in a recent statement. “From this situation, I have learned to not poke fun at people different than me and to hold my tongue,” Pyle explains. “Be a bigger man.”