Public Health Chief to Be Replaced
By Stephen Smith, The Boston Globe
Jan. 19–Paul Cote, whose leadership of the state Department of Public Health came under fire for bowing to political pressures, is being replaced under the administration of Governor Deval Patrick, according to internal memos.
No successor has been named, but the new secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, indicated in a staff memo that she intends to choose a new public health commissioner “in the coming weeks.”
“I want to thank Paul Cote for his work as . . . commissioner of public health,” Bigby wrote in a memo the Globe obtained yesterday. “I am grateful that Paul will remain as interim commissioner until a permanent commissioner is appointed.”
A state health spokeswoman said neither Bigby nor Cote wished to comment further yesterday.
In his own memo, Cote sought to assure staff members that there would be “as seamless a transition as possible.”
“You should know up front,” Cote wrote, “that the administration plans to engage in a transparent process for reviewing candidates and selecting the very best commissioner to lead the department.”
The new commissioner will be the fourth in four years to direct the oldest state public health agency in the nation, a department still recovering from earlier budget cuts. Cote, who previously ran the state’s Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, was named interim public health commissioner in March 2005 by Governor Mitt Romney before being appointed to the job permanently that October.
But Cote quickly found himself enmeshed in political controversy. Four times during a nine-month period, Romney and his top aides reversed Cote’s decisions or orchestrated the adoption of policies consistent with the governor’s conservative social views.
Those decisions involved issues such as abstinence education, stem cell research, and the sale of drug needles to prevent AIDS. Morale sagged in the agency as Cote accepted fault when the administration reversed agency initiatives, including a plan to ban the distribution of gift bags containing infant formula at maternity wards.
Still, after several years of drastic budget cuts during the state’s fiscal crisis, Cote oversaw a restoration of some of that funding.
Geoffrey Wilkinson, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Health Association , said Cote had been a strong advocate for measures designed to prepare the state for a long-feared global flu epidemic.
“Paul Cote cares about the department . . . . But he has not been able to work with support from above,” said Wilkinson, referring to the former Romney administration. “We see Deval Patrick’s election as a new beginning for public health in Massachusetts.”
Speculation is rampant in public health circles about potential successors to Cote, with two names mentioned most prominently: John Auerbach and Harold Cox.
Before becoming executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, Auerbach was chief of staff at the Department of Public Health and director of the state’s HIV/AIDS Bureau.
Cox, now an associate dean at Boston University’s School of Public Health, previously served as Cambridge’s public health commissioner.
Auerbach and Cox both declined yesterday to speculate on their potential selection as state public health commissioner.
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