Following some 14 months as interim Connecticut Department of Public Health commissioner, Dr. Deidre Gifford will step aside on Sept. 20, when Dr. Manisha Juthani is expected to begin serving as DPH commissioner.
Gifford will remain at the DPH helm until Juthani officially begins, and will also continue as commissioner of the Department of Social Services. Gov. Ned Lamont, who announced his nomination of Juthani today, also announced that Gifford will serve in the newly-created role of Senior Adviser to the Governor for Health and Human Services.
In that role, Gifford will be tasked with coordinating a multi-agency approach among the state”™s nine health and human services agencies to improving health and health care in Connecticut. Lamont noted that the nine agencies serve many overlapping populations and provide similar programs and functions; however, he said, they often are not optimally coordinated.
As Senior Adviser to the Governor for Health and Human Services, Gifford will convene and lead coordination efforts between these agencies, working closely with the Office of Policy and Management, as well as provide the governor with policy input and recommendations that address issues of health, health care costs, quality, and disparities.
The state”™s nine health and human services agencies include:
- Department of Aging and Disability Services
- Department of Children and Families
- Department of Developmental Services
- Office of Early Childhood
- Office of Health Strategy
- Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services
- Department of Public Health
- Department of Social Services
- Department of Veterans Affairs
Expected to easily win confirmation from the General Assembly, Juthani will become the state”™s first Indian-American commissioner.
Juthani is an infectious diseases physician at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, where she specializes in the diagnosis, management, and prevention of infections in older adults. Her most recent area of interest is at the interface of infectious diseases and palliative care, including the role of antibiotics at the end of life.
At today”™s press conference, she noted that when she first began dealing with Covid-19 patients last year, “I felt helpless.” But as the health care industry struggled to procure sufficient amounts of PPE, she said, “I saw nurse after nurse, nurses”™ aides, respiratory therapists, doctors and many others enter rooms fearlessly to care for the sick.”
Juthani said her priorities will include closing the disparities among who receives proper health care and ensuring health care equity.
Josh Geballe, the state”™s COO, said that the administration considered “well over a hundred” candidates for DPH commissioner, interviewed about a dozen and narrowed it down to five finalists.
Asked about the Delta variant, Juthani said it is “taking off” and that it is “the most infectious we have seen out of the variants that re out there.”
She echoed other health officials in maintaining that the best way to stave off the variant, and Covid in general, is through vaccinations. Juthani said she was encouraged by the fact that, around the country, vaccinations have been increasing over the past few weeks.
“We are not out of the woods,” Lamont noted about the virus. “Our infection rate has gone up, over 2%, and hospitalizations are beginning to pop up a little bit.” As of 3 p.m. today, the state has a 2.27% positivity rate.
The governor predicted that Juthani “is going to make an enormous difference.”
The DPH nominee”™s background includes serving as a chief resident at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She arrived at Yale School of Medicine in 2002 for infectious diseases fellowship training and joined the faculty full-time in 2006. She assumed the role of infectious diseases fellowship program director in 2012.
Gifford replaced Renee Coleman-Mitchell, who in May 2020 was abruptly fired by Lamont. The move was so sudden that there initially was some confusion as to whether she had been fired or had resigned.
“That”™s still being worked out,” Lamont told the Business Journal when asked for specifics.
Coleman-Mitchell had come under heavy fire for what was perceived as a mishandling of 2017-18 kindergarten immunization data, as well as other issues.
Coleman-Mitchell, who is Black, later accused the Lamont administration of being discriminatory and saying that Geballe had used his position as COO to undermine her during her tenure in state government.
