Pennsylvania will get its fourth health secretary in two years

Acting Pennsylvania Health Secretary Keara Klinepeter will step down Friday and be replaced by Physician General Denise Johnson, Gov. Tom Wolf announced.

Johnson, an obstetrician who became physician general in March 2021, will be the fourth person to head the Pennsylvania Department of Health since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Klinepeter is leaving the position ahead of the birth of her first child, due in June, said a Department of Health spokesperson.

Johnson will be the first Black woman to head the state Health Department.

She will take over at a time when the state has shrunk its role in the pandemic response, with no mandates or restrictions imposed on the public and no recent major changes in strategy. This month, the Department of Health ended its weekly email updates on the state of the pandemic, replacing them with monthly updates, and announced it would soon stop updating its online COVID data dashboard daily, instead updating weekly.

“The pandemic has changed many aspects of public health here in Pennsylvania and nationwide,” Johnson said in a statement. “I am honored to lead the department during this transformative time in public health.”

It’s possible Wolf won’t push to get his new acting secretary confirmed during an election year. Confirmation hearings can be politically contentious, and Republican candidates for governor have hammered Wolf’s pandemic response. He did not move to get Alison Beam or Klinepeter confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, and Johnson takes over with less than a year left in Wolf’s term.

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It’s another moment of turnover for the Department of Health. Former Health Secretary Rachel Levine, who was appointed in 2017, led the state through the first year of the pandemic before departing for the Biden administration at the start of last year. She was succeeded by Beam, who led the department through the vaccine rollout.

Beam resigned at the end of 2021, citing plans to spend more time with her family, and was replaced by Klinepeter, who has held the job for about four months.

“Keara has been an asset to the Department of Health and the Wolf Administration throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, providing necessary leadership and guidance to prepare for the endemic phase of the pandemic,” Wolf said in a statement.

Johnson has made several public appearances this month, including at a health equity summit in Pittsburgh.

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Taking on the role of physician general at the height of the vaccine rollout last spring, Johnson aimed to answer the public’s questions, debunk misinformation, and dispel confusion, in appearances at news briefings and vaccine clinics, often emphasizing vaccine outreach efforts to underserved communities.

Now, the pandemic is at a strange new juncture, with the devastating omicron surge having receded, mask mandates nationwide dropped, and the BA.2 subvariant increasingly spreading. Vaccine uptake has been at an all-time low.

Johnson plans to focus on health equity, including “long-term efforts to make high-quality health care available for all Pennsylvanians, including minority populations and underserved communities, both in rural and urban areas,” she said in response to questions from The Inquirer.

Among her other goals are improving maternal and child health care and addressing the opioid crisis. The department doesn’t anticipate enacting new pandemic measures, said department spokesperson Mark O’Neill.

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Before becoming physician general, Johnson was chief medical officer at Meadville Medical Center in Crawford County, where she had worked since 2008. Prior to that, she had spent 13 years in private practice.

Her appointment will also make another physician head of the Health Department; Levine, who was a doctor, served as both health secretary and physician general. Beam and Klinepeter, who were not doctors, served alongside a physician general.

Johnson will be the fifth health secretary to act under Wolf’s administration; all five have been women. Prior to Wolf’s appointment of Karen Murphy after he took office in 2015, the only other woman to head the department had been Edith MacBride-Dexter, who was appointed in 1935.

“The Wolf Administration is proud to have had four highly qualified Secretaries of Health lead the Department of Health through an unprecedented global pandemic and response,” O’Neill said.

Staff writer Andrew Seidman contributed to this article.