Alison Beam will resign as acting Pa. health secretary at year’s end

Acting Pennsylvania Health Secretary Alison Beam will resign at the end of the month, Gov. Tom Wolf announced Monday, after a year of rapidly changing conditions marked by the coronavirus vaccine rollout, the state’s reopening, the emergence of the delta variant, the advent of booster and pediatric shots.

Beam, 35, took over the role in January, when then-Secretary Rachel Levine departed to serve in the Biden administration. She is leaving to spend time with her family, said her deputy secretary, Keara Klinepeter.

Klinepeter will become acting secretary in January, Wolf said.

“Serving as acting secretary during such a critical time in public health has been the most humbling honor of my career,” Beam said in a statement.

She came to the helm just after the vaccine rollout had begun, at a time when the supply of shots was low, the state’s lines of communication with providers and the public were seriously garbled, and frustration with the system abounded. As the national vaccine supply grew, Pennsylvania went from having one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country to one of the highest.

Beam instituted policies to help speed vaccine delivery, including a requirement for providers to administer most doses within a week of receiving them and a temporary focus on the highest-capacity providers. The administration also launched a COVID-19 task force that worked to speed up the spring vaccine rollout, including through targeted initiatives to immunize frontline workers and by standing up mass clinics.

State Sen. Art Haywood (D., Montgomery), who worked with Beam on the task force, said she overcame early difficulties and responded to concerns about vaccine equity and other issues.

“She did a great job, in extremely challenging times, trying to get folks vaccinated,” said Haywood, who is also the minority chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. “She was not deterred by the challenges that we had.”

Beam presided over the state’s reopening this spring, lifting the universal mask mandate and other mitigation measures as the state’s vaccination rate rose and virus spread slowed.

Her department, however, also contended with controversies, particularly earlier in the rollout, including a fight with Southeastern Pennsylvania officials over vaccine distribution and a shortage of second doses in February that delayed thousands of people’s shots.

The administration’s statewide school mask mandate was struck down by the state Supreme Court last week, when the justices affirmed a lower-court ruling that the state’s health officials didn’t have the authority to impose the requirement.

And the department has struggled with the collection of certain information, challenged by an out-of-date system, with gaps in its collection of certain racial, breakthrough, and second-dose data. Beam’s team did a data adjustment this summer that corrected some of the issues.

» READ MORE: From January: New Pa. health secretary aims to improve vaccine rollout and push feds for more doses

The department will continue to face funding and staffing challenges next year. Pennsylvania was among the least-funded states in terms of public health dollars per person in 2020.

Haywood said those “significant” challenges would remain for the next secretary: “When you are near-last in funding, it is hard to go to the top.”

Beam has been the subject of criticism and praise from Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have raised questions about the department’s pandemic response in nursing homes, testing strategy, and other issues. They also have praised her role in the vaccine rollout. The state now has about two-thirds of the population fully vaccinated.

“The commonwealth has been fortunate to have had the benefit of her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic — especially as the Department of Health oversaw a massive vaccine rollout over the course of the past year,” Wolf said in a statement.

Through the Department of Health, Beam declined a request for comment.

It’s not unusual for appointees to leave when an administration approaches its end: Wolf has just over a year left in his term; a new governor will be elected in 2022.

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Klinepeter, 32, of Camp Hill, will become the third health secretary to serve the state during the coronavirus pandemic. Asked whether she would stay until the end of Wolf’s term, she didn’t say, indicating it would be up to the governor.

In an interview, Klinepeter said she had worked closely with Beam over the last year and planned to continue “competently managing the COVID-19 response,” including monitoring the omicron variant, keeping vaccination a key priority, and managing any strain on hospitals.

“We did a tremendous job of working on the vaccine rollout, and I look forward to continuing the good progress that we made there, particularly with a focus on boosters,” Klinepeter said.