On Wednesday, Governor Kathy Hochul named Mary T. Bassett as the state’s new health commissioner. She replaces Howard Zucker, who oversaw the state’s response to COVID-19 under former governor Andrew Cuomo, and submitted his resignation on Thursday, Sept. 23

“I am humbled and honored to return to my home state of New York to lead the Department of Health at this pivotal time,” Bassett said in a statement. “The pandemic underscored the importance of public health, while also revealing inequities driven by structural racism. As we move to end the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to create a state that is more equitable for all New Yorkers.”

Bassett currently serves as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights in the department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

From 2014 through summer 2018, she served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she made racial justice a priority and worked to address the structural racism at the root of the city’s persistent gaps in health between white New Yorkers and communities of color, according to a release from the governor’s office.

Bassett also led the Department’s response to Ebola, Legionnaires’ disease and other disease outbreaks.

In 2002, Bassett was appointed deputy commissioner of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In this role, she led the division responsible for New York City's pioneering tobacco control interventions and food policy, including the nation’s first calorie-posting requirements and trans fat restrictions.

From 2009 to 2014, Dr. Bassett served as program director for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's African Health Initiative and Child Well-Being Prevention Program.

Early in her career, she served on the medical faculty at the University of Zimbabwe for 17 years, during which time she developed a range of AIDS prevention interventions. Building on this experience, she went on to serve as associate director of health equity at the Rockefeller Foundation's Southern Africa Office, overseeing its Africa AIDS portfolio.

Bassett grew up in New York City. She received a bachelor’s degree in history and science from Harvard, a medical degree from Columbia, and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Washington.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer