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President-elect Donald Trump on Friday announced his picks for the crucial remaining public health roles in his new administration.

Trump appointed Dr. Janette Nesheiwat to become U.S. Surgeon General; Dr. Marty Makary as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and dr. Dave Weldon, a former Florida congressman, as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trump’s choice to serve as director of the National Institutes of Health remains notable.

The announced selections come as some in the public health community have already expressed concern about the president-elect’s intention to elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, to the nation’s top health post as secretary of the U.S. Department . of health and human services. Trump’s picks, unveiled during a flurry of Cabinet and staff announcements on Friday evening, paint a fuller picture of what the health service would look like under Kennedy if confirmed by the US Senate.

A person familiar with the search told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Kennedy played a key role in selecting the names for the department, including the FDA commissioner and the CDC director.

If the appointees are also confirmed, they will fall under the purview of Kennedy, who has stressed the importance of ridding the department and its agencies of corruption. Trump, for his part, said during the campaign that he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.”

The surgeon general, also known as “the nation’s physician,” is a physician who focuses on educating and advising Americans on how to improve their health. He or she issues opinions, reports and calls to action to provide the best available scientific information on critical issues. He or she also serves as vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, overseeing this group of uniformed officers who seek to promote the nation’s health.

Nominees for the position of surgeon general must be confirmed by the Senate to serve.

Nesheiwat is a family physician and Fox News medical contributor certified by the American Board of Family Medicine. According to her profile as a physician in New York State, she attended medical school at the American University of the Caribbean in St. Maarten, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

“We are approaching the five-year anniversary of Covid,” Nesheiwat said in a Fox News segment on mpox on Sunday. “And if you remember that we had incredible public health policies under President Trump’s leadership, President Trump’s unprecedented creation of Operation Warp Speed ​​was one like we’ve never seen before. And that’s a vaccine that saved thousands of lives, and we continued to see lives saved even after President Trump left office.”

The Food and Drug Commissioner oversees the FDA, which is responsible for the safety, efficacy, and security of drugs, biological products, medical devices, food, and cosmetics. Authorization or approval of vaccines falls under the purview of the FDA. It also regulates the production, marketing and distribution of tobacco products.

The commissioner is traditionally a physician, and nominees must be approved by the Senate.

Makary is a surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins University. He received a medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and attended graduate school at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, Johns Hopkins says, and helped lead the World Health Organization’s patient safety program.

Makary, like Nesheiwat, has ties to Fox News. In an op-ed published on Fox News at the height of the pandemic in 2021, Makary argued that Covid-19 had revealed the FDA to be a “broken” government that was “muddled in politics and red tape.”

The agency moved too slowly in approving the antiviral pill molnupiravir, he said, and stubbornly stuck to its recommendations on Covid vaccine spacing. “It is time for the old guard medical leaders to step aside into an advisory role and let new scientists, those who are not afraid to make their voices heard, take the lead,” he wrote.

He became a paid contributor for the network when the pandemic subsided in March 2024 and remained in the role until mid-2024, a Fox News spokesperson said. He appeared on Fox News Sunday earlier this week to endorse Kennedy for HHS secretary.

During the pandemic, Makary has been an advocate of the importance of natural immunity from Covid-19 infection.

In February 2021, he predicted in the Wall Street Journal that this natural immunity would help the nation achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus within two months. Later that year, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that workers with natural immunity who had been fired because they had not been fully vaccinated should be rehired. “The superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear.”

The director of the CDC heads the nation’s top public health agency, which deals with disease prevention and control and environmental health. One of his or her most prominent duties is making final recommendations on vaccinations and immunization schedules. He or she also serves as administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which responds to large-scale hazardous exposures such as chemical spills.

The CDC director, previously appointed by the president, will be confirmed by the Senate starting in January.

Weldon earned a medical degree from SUNY-Buffalo on an Army fellowship and completed post-doctoral training in internal medicine at Letterman Army Medical Center. He served six years on active duty and eight years in the Army Reserve, according to a biography on his U.S. Senate campaign website. He is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

“As a physician, Dr. Weldon has been involved in many health care policy issues, including efforts to ban human cloning and vaccine safety,” the campaign website notes. “He helped lead efforts to remove toxic mercury-containing preservatives from childhood vaccines.”

In 2007, then-Rep. Weldon introduced the Vaccine Safety and Public Confidence Assurance Act, which aimed to establish an “Agency for Vaccine Safety Evaluation” within HHS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is responsible for promoting both high immunization rates and vaccine safety, duties that some may view as a conflict of interest,” the legislation says.

In 2005, during the legal battle for Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman left in a persistent vegetative state after cardiac arrest, Weldon introduced the Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act to allow a federal court to hear the issue .

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Brian Stelter and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.