Philly health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole to step down

Philadelphia’s health commissioner, Cheryl Bettigole, will resign Feb. 15, city officials said Friday, after she led the department through much of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Frank A. Franklin, the city’s deputy health commissioner, will head the health department on an interim basis while the city begins a nationwide search to fill Bettigole’s position.

Bettigole’s more than two years running the health department coincided with a pandemic that represented a public health crisis without precedent in modern times. She oversaw the city’s role in managing the first year of the COVID vaccine rollout, and mandates on when to require masks in public places.

Even as the pandemic became less deadly, she guided the city through repeated COVID spikes and a subsequent “tri-demic” of high flu, COVID, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases that swamped area emergency rooms last winter.

In a statement, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker thanked Bettigole for her service to the city. “Dr. Bettigole served during a very difficult time in this city — the COVID-19 pandemic — and she served well,” said Joe Grace, a city spokesperson.

Bettigole was not available for an interview on Friday.

“I am immensely proud of the work that has taken place in the Health Department and am profoundly grateful for the professionalism, expertise, and dedication found within the employees who I was fortunate to serve with,” Bettigole said in a statement. She did not say why she planned to resign.

It’s typical for a new administration to replace most of the commissioners in the city’s operational departments. But since Parker took office a month ago, most of those departments are still being led by holdovers from former Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration. Only the police and fire departments and the Office of Emergency Management have new leaders named by Parker.

A family physician, Bettigole’s prior experience included working as the chief medical officer of a New Jersey federally qualified health center and directing a city-run public health clinic in Philadelphia. In 2015, Bettigole became the director of the health department’s division of chronic disease and injury prevention.

She was appointed to lead the entire health department on an interim basis in May 2021 after then-health commissioner Thomas Farley resigned over his handling of the remains of victims of the 1985 MOVE bombings, discovered sitting in a box in the Medical Examiner’s office after four decades.

In November 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 public health emergency, Bettigole was officially named health commissioner.

She called the job a tough one, but also “a chance to get things done, and an opportunity to make a difference,” she told The Inquirer at the time.

In addition to the COVID-19 crisis, she dealt with an mpox outbreak and ensuing vaccination campaign, the rise of the animal tranquilizer xylazine in the city’s illicit opioid epidemic, and several environmental health issues, including a chemical spill in the Delaware River and several days of poor air quality from wildfire smoke.

She also dealt with the fallout of the MOVE scandal at the Medical Examiner’s office, which is overseen by the health department. The office hired a new director, Constance DiAngelo, who pledged to undergo a number of reforms recommended by independent investigators.

DiAngelo resigned in late December after just under a year. City officials declined to comment on why DiAngelo resigned, noting that several of the recommended reforms have been completed or are underway.

In early 2023, Bettigole told The Inquirer that she prioritized reaching out to underserved communities above all — and that the uneven early days of the COVID vaccine distribution, which began before she took office, still weighed on her.

She said the department wanted to build “people-centered connections” in order to build trust with communities that, for too long, had been underserved by city agencies like the health department.

Staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this report.