Georgia Department of Public Health commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald has been appointed as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS secretary Tom Price, a former Georgia congressman, announced the appointment this morning. She'll replace Tom Frieden, who led the agency during the Ebola and Zika virus crises. Anne Schuchat has been the acting CDC director since the end of the Obama administration.
What to know: She's an obstetrician-gynecologist who ran for Congress twice and has served as Georgia's health commissioner since 2011, the Washington Post reports. She also worked as a health care policy adviser to House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s.
One story you might hear again: STAT notes one controversy from her term as health commissioner: Georgia Gov, Nathan Deal claimed in 2014 that "water kills the Ebola virus," and said he had learned that from a meeting with her. (She later said Ebola can only survive a few minutes in water, but "once it gets in your body, it's mean.")
