This month, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appointed Dr. Leana Wen as commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department. Usually, this sort of thing, as important as it is, isn’t something we’d pay attention to. But Wen isn’t your average city administrator.
First of all, she’s remarkably young–only 31. Over the course of her career, she’s won a trip with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, written a book (When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests), and given a TED Talk that’s been seen by three-quarters of a million people.
As Wen’s TED Talk explores, our new commissioner’s advocacy on the part of patients — for example, encouraging physicians to be transparent about the money they receive from drug companies — has made some of her peers very mad at her. Like, death threat mad. But that doesn’t seem to have stopped her from fighting the good fight.
We’re excited to see what she’ll get done in Baltimore!
