Planned Parenthood names Baltimore Health Commissioner as its Mew president

Dr. Leana Wen stands in the emergency department at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, during her medical residency. AP/STEVEN SENNE

Health commissioner for Baltimore city, Dr. Leana Wen has been picked as a replacement for Cecile Richards to become the new president of planned parenthood, a nonprofit that provides reproductive health services in the United States.
Cecile Richards, earlier this year announced that she would be stepping down from the post after serving as president since 2006. Soon after, the organization launched a committee to find her successor.
An outspoken critic of President Trump, Wen has been appointed in an era when Planned Parenthood has fought administration attempts to cut off its taxpayer funding and faces deep concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s tilting increasingly against abortion rights.

Wen, 35, immigrated from China with her family as a child. Her family relied on Medicaid, food stamps and Planned Parenthood for health care as she grew up in California, she said. She succeeds Cecile Richards, who ran the organization for the past 12 years and whose background is more political. Richards was deputy chief of staff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and is the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards.
Wen, an emergency room doctor by training, described seeing a patient die as a result of a botched abortion performed at home.
“She died because of a failure in our system,” Wen said, “and I wanted to fight for our most vulnerable individuals on a bigger scale.
“Reproductive health care is health care. Women’s health care is health care. And health care has to be understood as a fundamental human right.”

In April, Baltimore and the organization Healthy Teen Network won a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, resulting in a judge’s order to restore $5 million for pregnancy prevention programs for city teens. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake ruled that HHS had given no reason to cut the money in the middle of a five-year grant. The government has appealed.

Wen said at the time that the lawsuit saved benefits for 20,000 Baltimore students in the program. She also has taken on the administration over attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. She will leave her job as Baltimore’s top public health official in October.
In recent years, Wen has been one of the more outspoken and progressive advocates of a public health approach to the opioid epidemic in a city that has long been plagued by heroin. She was an early proponent of widespread distribution of naloxone, the fast-acting antidote to opioid overdoses, making it available over the counter to anyone who wanted it.

“As a patient, I depended on Planned Parenthood for medical care at various times in my own life, and as a public health leader, I have seen firsthand the lifesaving work it does for our most vulnerable communities”

“As a doctor, I will ensure we continue to provide high-quality health care, including the full range of reproductive care, and will fight with everything I have to protect the access of millions of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood.”
In a separate statement released by the city of Baltimore, Wen said her last day as health commissioner will be Friday, October 12.

September 13, 2018