Name: Biden selects three Bay Area doctors for COVID-19 transition team
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Biden selects three Bay Area doctors for COVID-19 transition team

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Left to right: Dr. Robert Rodriquez (UCSF)/ Dr. Eric Goosby (Susan Merrell)/ Dr. David A. Kessler (AP)Three UC San Francisco physicians will help guide President-elect Joe Biden’s pandemic response strategy as members of his newly-announced Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.One of these local experts, Dr. David Kessler, will serve as a co-chair of the board, which will work with health officials nationwide to create policies to stem the virus’s spread, ensure vaccines are safe, reduce health disparities and reopen schools and businesses.Many of the members have already been working with the Biden campaign and transition team for months. But even as approval of the first vaccine is around the corner, it is not known how the nation’s two COVID-19 task forces — one incoming and one outgoing — will cooperate with each other. The Trump administration’s task force hasn’t held a public press briefing in several months.“It doesn’t surprise any of us that UCSF would be ‘front and center’ as it relates to the talent pool that President elect Joe Biden would choose from,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday. “So we couldn’t be… more proud of that extraordinary institution.”Another newly-named board member, Dr. Atul Gawande, has Stanford University ties. Now at Harvard, Gawande graduated from Stanford in 1987; his wife, Kathleen Hobson, graduated from Stanford in 1988.The UCSF physicians named to the panel, unveiled by President-elect Biden’s transition team on Monday, are:Dr. Eric Goosby, professor of clinical medicine and the director of Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy in the UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences. Known for his sense of urgency and a history of success, he was tapped by former President Barack Obama to be the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator – an ambassadorial position – heading up the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which supported HIV testing and counseling and provides antiretroviral treatment in under-resourced countries. He is also the U.N. Special Envoy on Tuberculosis, bringing to the job a combination of expertise in infectious diseases and experience running large public health response programs in the U.S. and internationally.Dr. Robert Rodriguez, professor of emergency medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine. His recent research has focused on how President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric put Latino patients’ health at risk by changing their perception of access to emergency care.&nbsp; His team also analyzed the emotional toll that COVID-19 is taking on the nation’s front-line emergency medicine physicians who are fearful due to lack of PPE and testing. He has served as a mentor for dozens of young doctors and has sought to advance the careers of underrepresented groups at all levels of medical training.Dr. David Kessler, professor of pediatric, epidemiology and biostatistics, former dean and vice chancellor for medical affairs at UCSF as well as former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. On his watch, an FDA advisory panel declared nicotine addictive, infuriating the cigarette companies. While dean of UCSF, he nurtured the development of the state-of-the-art Mission Bay campus but was fired after bitter disputes with top university officials about accounting practices at the medical school, a decision that shocked faculty members. The school later apologized, saying that it had not accurately portrayed the funding situation. His 2009 book The End of Overeating, a New York Times best seller, asserts that the sugar, fat and salt in modern foods are designed to stimulate the reward pathways in the brain, conditioning us to crave more food.“They represent the extraordinary and relentless dedication the UCSF community has shown in meeting the challenge of the coronavirus across our patient care, research, and education efforts,” UCSF chancellor Sam Hawgood said Monday morning, in a prepared statement. “UCSF looks forward to working with President-elect Biden’s administration.”The new task force includes other former government health officials, academics, and major leaders in medicine, among them:Two additional health experts will serve as advisors:&nbsp;PrintThanks for reading!Get unlimited access to enjoy this article and moreAlready a subscriber? LoginView more on

Left to right: Dr. Robert Rodriquez (UCSF)/ Dr. Eric Goosby (Susan Merrell)/ Dr. David A. Kessler (AP)Three UC San Francisco physicians will help guide President-elect Joe Biden’s pandemic response strategy as members of his newly-announced Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.One of these local experts, Dr. David Kessler, will serve as a co-chair of the board, which will work with health officials nationwide to create policies to stem the virus’s spread, ensure vaccines are safe, reduce health disparities and reopen schools and businesses.Many of the members have already been working with...

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Lisa M. Krieger

Latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area news from reporters & columnists at The Mercury News.

Biden selects three Bay Area doctors for COVID-19 transition team

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