Mandy Cohen

In January 2017 Cohen was appointed as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services by Governor Roy Cooper.[3][12][10][13] As secretary, she oversees 16,000 department employees and has dealt with multiple health crises in North Carolina including the Opioid epidemic, GenX in drinking water, and the COVID-19 pandemic.[3][6][14]

Cohen has navigated the political divide over Medicaid in North Carolina, with Democratic Governor Cooper wanting to expand it under the Affordable Care Act and the Republican-majority North Carolina State Legislature opposing such measures.[6][15] She helped lead North Carolina through a transition from free-for-service Medicaid to a model contracted by the state with private insurance companies that are paid pre-determined rates to provide health services.[6] Cohen spearheaded Healthy Opportunities, an initiative testing the impact of providing high-need Medicaid enrollees with housing, food, transportation, and interpersonal safety interventions with the goal of improving public health and reducing costs.[6] The initiative was funded with $650 million from state and federal Medicaid, authorized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.[6] She implemented the Opioid Action Plan, which uses $45.5 million in grant funding to fight opioid misuse in the state.[6] The plan also updated the Controlled Substance Reporting System, helping doctors identify patients at risk of misusing opioids.[6] Cohen's plan led to a decline in overdose deaths in North Carolina for the first time in over a decade.[6] She led the Early Childhood Action Plan, focusing on improving health conditions of children from birth to age eight.[6]  

On September 14, 2017, she was a guest speaker at a luncheon hosted by the League of Women Voters at North Carolina State University.[16]

In 2019 she criticized the North Carolina House of Representatives' proposed budget for 2019–2021, arguing that it harms North Carolinians by making massive cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services, potentially impacting "everything from health inspections of restaurants to the safety of drinking water to child protective services."[6] In February 2019 Modern Healthcare named Cohen as one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Healthcare.[5][6] She was honored with the "Top 50 in Digital Health" award by Rock Health.[12]

Cohen has stressed the need for North Carolinians to wear face masks, practice social distancing, and wash their hands in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19.[3][17][18] In March 2020 she sent a letter to Marcia Lee Kelly, President of the 2020 Republican National Convention, asking for detailed plans on how the convention would operate during the COVID-19 pandemic after President Donald Trump published a series of tweets threatening to pull the convention out of North Carolina.[19][20] In June 2020 she met virtually with members of the North Carolina House of Representatives' Health Committee to address concerns regarding the pandemic.[21][22] Cohen announced the creation of up to three hundred testing sites in North Carolina, active through July, and requested more supplies from the federal government.[23] She also met with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to discuss the need for more chemical reagents.[23] On June 30, 2020 Cohen announced that her department would partner with Omnicare, a company owned by CVS Health, to administer tests to 36,000 nursing home residents and 25,000 nursing home employees in over 400 locations.[24]

In the beginning of July, Cohen warned of people becoming desensitized to the data being collected about COVID-19.[25] She held a media briefing on July 16, 2020, to address virus testing in North Carolina, after the state reached 96,426 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,588 deaths related to the virus.[26] She stated that she had concerns about teacher safety were schools to re-open amidst the pandemic, but was confident in studies showing that the virus has minimal health consequences on younger children, saying that schools "have not played a significant role in the spreading of COVID-19."[27] She reportedly met with William L. Roper, President of the University of North Carolina, to discuss how to resume in-person instruction for students at North Carolina's public colleges and universities.[27] Earlier that month, during a press conference, she had called the virus a "serious threat".[28] She warned of the state possibly returning to a stay-at-home order.[29][30] She had also linked North Carolina's rise in cases with the reopening of the state.[31][32] Cohen indicated that there would be a test surge in areas with troubling metrics including the counties of Alamance, Durham, Duplin, Forsyth, Lee, Johnston, Mecklenburg, and Wake.[31]