Leana Wen

Leana Sheryle Wen (; pinyin: Wēn Línyǎn; born Wen Linyan; January 27, 1983) is an American physician, author, professor, speaker, consultant, columnist, and television commentator. She is former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore and former president of Planned Parenthood.

Wen has served as a public health communicator during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2022 mpox outbreak, appearing frequently on CNN as a medical analyst. She was asked to testify four times to Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, including twice to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. She has garnered criticism by some public health advocates for her views on the pandemic.

Early life and family Born Wen Linyan in Shanghai, China on January 27, 1983, to Ying Sandy Zhang and Xiaolu Wen. Granted political asylum, the Wen family lived in East Los Angeles and Compton, California. In 2003, Wen and her family became U.S. citizens. Her father delivered newspapers and was a dishwasher, later serving as technology manager for The Chinese Daily News in Los Angeles.

Education As a result of her own asthma attacks as a child and seeing a neighbor's child die of an asthma attack, Wen decided that she wanted to become an emergency room physician.

At age 13, Wen began attending California State University, Los Angeles, via its the Early Entrance Program (EEP), and graduated summa cum laude at age 18 with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry in 2001. She also met her future husband, Sebastian Walker, during her time in England. Wen became involved in U.S. and international health policy during medical school, serving in Geneva, Switzerland, as a fellow for the World Health Organization and in Rwanda as a fellow for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Career

Emergency medicine Following medical school, Wen completed a residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) and a clinical fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She is board certified in emergency medicine. Wen started working in emergency medicine at BWH and Mass General before moving to the ER at the George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC,

Baltimore City health commissioner From December 2014 until October 2018, Wen served as the health commissioner for Baltimore City under two mayors. She was first appointed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake; in December 2016, she was reappointed by Mayor Catherine Pugh. She resigned in 2018, when she was appointed head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Following the riots, the Baltimore City Health Department team launched numerous campaigns, including a citywide trauma response plan, youth health and wellness strategy, violence prevention programs, B'Healthy in B'More blog, and B'More Health Talks, a biweekly town hall and podcast series on health disparities.

In March 2018, on behalf of Wen and the Baltimore City Health Department, the City of Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting teen pregnancy prevention funds, which resulted in a federal judge ordering the Trump administration to restore $5 million in grant funding to two Baltimore-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. She wrote an opinion editorial criticizing proposed changes to the Title X program which would affect health clinics in Baltimore providing reproductive health care for low income women. This court decision was later reversed by the 9th Circuit court, enabling the Trump administration to withhold Title X funding for abortion.

Opioid overdose epidemic response Wen has led implementation of the Baltimore opioid overdose prevention and response plan, which includes a blanket prescription for the opioid antidote, naloxone; "hotspotting" and street outreach teams to target individuals most at risk; training family/friends on naloxone use; and launching a new public education campaign. Wen testified to the U.S. Senate HELP Committee and U.S. House Oversight Committee on Baltimore's overdose prevention efforts. She led a group of state and city health officials to petition the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on adding black box warnings to opioids and benzodiazepines. In March 2016, she was invited by the White House to join President Barack Obama and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta on a panel discussion, where she spoke about Baltimore's response. She convened doctors and public health leaders to sign the Baltimore Statement on the Importance of Childhood Vaccinations and to successfully advocate to ban the sale of powdered alcohol in Maryland and synthetic drugs in Baltimore.

Congressman Elijah Cummings cited Wen's efforts to combat the opioid epidemic in Baltimore and sought her help in creating national legislation to change how the United States fights it.

In 2018, the National Association of County and City Health Officials awarded the Baltimore City Health Department the Local Health Department of the Year.

Planned Parenthood On September 18, 2018, Wen was appointed president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was the first medical doctor to serve in the role in nearly 50 years and was the first woman doctor ever to do so. In an interview with Elle magazine, Wen described her excitement to be at the helm of the organization where both she and her mother had received significant medical care many years prior. The period also saw a marked increase in the number of laws passed at the state level that restricted access to abortions.

As president of Planned Parenthood, Wen worked to expand non-abortion services like maternal health and mental health services and to rebrand Planned Parenthood from its image as an abortion rights advocacy group to a comprehensive women's health organization that serves women and families. She spoke out about her own experiences as a cervical cancer survivor who struggled with infertility, and about a miscarriage she suffered while in the role.

In July 2019, Wen was forced to resign from her position after only 8 months. The board gave no reason, but sources cited a dispute over management and organizational philosophy. Other sources alluded to Wen's incompatibilities with the organization on an interpersonal level, citing organization members' difficulty adapting to her leadership style.

On July 19, 2019, Wen published an opinion editorial in The New York Times which set forth the circumstances underlying her departure from Planned Parenthood. She attributed her sudden departure more specifically to disagreements over the centrality of abortion in the mission of Planned Parenthood and stated her view that "As one of the few national health care organizations with a presence in all 50 states, Planned Parenthood's mandate should be to promote reproductive health care as part of a wide range of policies that affect women's health and public health." Echoing her earlier statements, she described her goal to focus on the more holistic elements of the organization, while the board instead wanted to focus on the political debate surrounding abortion rights. She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Journalism

The Washington Post Wen started writing for The Washington Post as a contributing op-ed writer in 2019. Her role as a columnist became formalized in 2020, and she began anchoring a weekly newsletter on public health and healthcare called The Checkup with Dr. Wen. Her commentaries for the Post started with a heavy focus on COVID-19 and have touched on a range of other issues, including the nursing shortage, the opioid epidemic, reemergence of polio, cancer, mental health, obesity, marijuana, and other public health and policy topics. In 2023, Wen received attention for a piece claiming that Covid deaths were being over counted, with some claiming vindication after claims of over counting deaths were decried as conspiracy theories years earlier.

CNN Wen has appeared frequently on CNN during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2022 monkeypox outbreak as an on-air medical analyst.

Wen wrote a blog, The Doctor is Listening. She was a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Psychology Today on patient empowerment and healthcare reform. She was also an advisor to the then-newly established Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and an advisor to the Lown Institute and the Medical Education Futures Study. She was the founder of Who's My Doctor, an international campaign that called for transparency in medicine.

Wen is a frequent keynote speaker on healthcare reform, education, and leadership, and has given several TED Talks. Her TED talk on transparency in medicine has been viewed over 1.9 million times.

COVID-19 Wen's evolving views on the COVID-19 pandemic have garnered support and controversy from both sides of the political spectrum.

A Texas man pleaded guilty to threatening her due to her advocacy for COVID-19 vaccines and was sentenced in federal court to six months in prison.

In 2022, Wen was scheduled to speak at American Public Health Association (APHA)'s annual meeting. However, an online petition was circulated that asked her to be removed as a speaker.

Water fluoridation Wen published an opinion piece in The Washington Post on November 12, 2024, suggesting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s stance against water fluoridation does not warrant the backlash it has garnered. Wen wrote that higher than normal levels fluoride may show some correlation with negative impacts on mental development while also stating that low levels of fluoride have been proven to be safe.

Dr. Wen also urged the Biden administration to approve the H5N1 vaccine. This vaccine has already been developed, and manufacturers have been contracted to produce nearly 5 million doses, although it still awaits FDA authorization. This situation marks a significant difference compared to the initial stages of the COVID-19 response.

Awards and recognition 2013: served as the national president of the American Medical Student Association and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine/Resident and Student Association. 2016: commencement speaker for the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Notre Dame of Maryland University, where she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.; commencement speaker at Washington University School of Medicine and at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 2017: honored as a Public Official of the Year by Governing, a source of information for elected, appointed and other public leaders 2017–18: named one of Modern Healthcare's 50 Most Influential Physician Executives and Leaders and one of its Top 25 Minority Physician Executives. 2019: named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People and referred to by Cynthia Nixon in the magazine as a "fierce visionary" for reproductive rights and health care. 2019 The Carnegie Corporation of New York honored Wen with Great Immigrant Award. 2021: named one of Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare. 2022: inducted as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; received the YWCA Excellence in Public Health Award.; awarded the Walter C. Alvarez award for excellence in communicating healthcare developments and concepts to the public by the American Medical Writers Association.

Books and selected publications