NYC Health Commissioner Leaving For Harvard Job

NEW YORK, NY — New York City's health commissioner will step down at the end of August to take a post at Harvard University, officials announced Thursday. Dr. Mary T. Bassett will become the director of Harvard's François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights after ending her four-and-a-half-year tenure at the helm of the Department of Health, Mayor Bill de Blasio's office said.

"In the midst of some of the biggest challenges we've faced in recent years, she was an extraordinarily calm and clear and methodical voice addressing really complex issues," de Blasio said.

The first deputy health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, will serve as acting commissioner once Bassett leaves.

City officials praised Bassett's work toward equity in public health since her start as health commissioner in 2014. She established the city's Center for Health Equity and started an implicit bias training initiative for Health Department employees, the mayor's office said.

De Blasio also praised Bassett's response to the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak that caused worldwide panic and brought an infected person to New York City. She helped "everyone to understand the disease and recognize how we would work our way through that crisis," the mayor said.

The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center, also known as Harvard FXB, is an interdisciplinary research center specializing in the link between health and human rights. In addition to leading the center, Bassett will be a professor of the practice of health and human rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Noting Bassett's previous AIDS-related work at the University of Zimbabwe and the Rockefeller Foundation's Southern Africa Office, Michelle A. Williams, the school's dean of the faculty, called Bassett "prominent public health figure with more than 30 years of experience devoted to promoting health equity and social justice, both in the US and abroad."

Bassett's departure follows revelations that the Health Department did not notify the city's public housing authority of more than 800 children who tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their blood. The city Department of Investigation has launched a probe related to the apparent communication breakdown, according to The New York Times.

De Blasio, a Democrat, said those revelations did not play a role in Bassett's decision to step down, adding that her communication with Harvard goes back several months.

"Clearly all the agencies involved are doing everything they can to address the underlying issues," the mayor said at an unrelated news conference.

(Lead image: Dr. Mary T. Bassett speaks at a news conference in 2015. Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)