1. Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald resigned Wednesday as director of the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a news outlet detailed her trade in tobacco stocks that appeared to present a conflict of interest because the agency is tasked with reducing tobacco use and promoting public health. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the stock purchases were made by Fitzgerald’s financial manager and that she later divested.
2. Fitzgerald had been the commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Public Health from its creation in 2011 until July, when President Donald Trump named her to head the CDC.
3. Fitzgerald had other investments that prevented her from handling some CDC business. She said she and her husband were legally obligated to maintain the investments, which caught the attention of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top-ranking Democrat on the committee that oversees the CDC. "I am concerned that you cannot perform the role of CDC director while being largely recused from matters pertaining to cancer and opioids, two of the most pervasive and urgent health challenges we face as a country," Murray wrote in a letter to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald called the recusals “very limited” and said she was following ethics rules laid out by the Department of Health and Human Services.
4. Axios, an online political news site, obtained an Aug. 31 CDC memo that restricted the release of information to the news media. The memo, written by a public affairs officer, instructed the agency’s employees not to speak to reporters. “This correspondence includes everything from formal interview requests to the most basic of data requests,” it stated.
5. Fitzgerald had a lengthy involvement in Georgia politics. She served as a health care policy adviser to U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell, both Republicans. She also twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Repubican in 1992 and 1994, and Gov. Zell Miller appointed her to the state Board of Education in 1996.
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