Sachin Jain: Mandy is the paragon of a modern public health official, recognizing both the importance of communications and operations

Sachin Jain shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Huge thanks to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen for delivering the 11th Annual Subhash Jain Honorary Endowed Lecture at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Mandy was a close colleague when I was at Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services early in my career and very graciously agreed to deliver the first lecture following my Dad’s passing last November.

She delivered a fireside chat in conversation with Neal Rakesh and delivered a master class on public health and stressed the importance of ‘making the invisible visible’ as we try to improve public health.

She drew on her experience leading the pandemic response when she was Secretary of the NC Department of Health and Human Services.

Mandy is the paragon of a modern public health official, recognizing both the importance of communications and operations.

At the height of the pandemic, Mandy held 180 press events, but simultaneously focused on operations and data interoperability.

She leveraged non-traditional approaches including partnering with social influencers to spread high quality public health messaging.

This focus resulted in >91% COVID19 vaccination rates for older adults in North Carolina—with higher than expected vaccination rates in minority populations.

Stepping into her national role, Mandy acknowledged the hard spade work that needs to be done to rebuild trust in public health institutions.

On the ever-important topic of cancer pain management (to which my Dad devoted his whole professional career), she stressed the importance “knowing what you are taking” and disseminating and embracing modern prescribing guidelines.

She closed with reminding us to focus more on prevention—smoking cessation, nutrition, obesity reduction, exercise—as we try to build a healthier nation.

Thank you, Mandy, for an inspiring presentation!”

More posts by Sachin Jain on oncodaily.com

Source: Sachin Jain/LinkedIn

Sachin Jain is the President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. He also serves as a Board Member at The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, an Academic Hospitalist (WOC) at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and a Board Member at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). He is also a board member of Omada Health.