In summary
Mark Ghaly has been a consistent voice in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Cabinet, shaping the administration’s COVID policy and efforts to reduce health care costs.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, who has served as California Governor Gavin Newsom’s top adviser and led the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is stepping down as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Governor’s office announced today.
Pediatrician Ghaly has been a constant presence in the Newsom administration since joining the governor’s cabinet in 2019. Many Californians may recognize the bespectacled doctor delivering COVID-19 updates from a podium or desk with colorful drawings of children in the background.
When some in the public criticized Governor Newsom’s pandemic restrictions as excessive, Ghaly was tasked with explaining the rationale and science behind the state’s decisions, and once the vaccine was available, he gave the governor the COVID-19 vaccine live on air.
“We’ve been through a lot. I believe we’ve accomplished a lot,” Ghaly said at a news conference. “Leaving office does not mean leaving national service. I look forward to continuing to have the opportunity to make many appearances and advance our ambitious goals to help as many vulnerable communities as possible.”
Newsom At the event Newsom said Ghaly was leaving the agency “to focus a little more on myself and my kids, rather than on 40 million Americans. He called Ghaly the most transformative health care leader” the US has seen in recent history.
“His steadfast leadership as California mounted its nation-leading response to the pandemic has saved countless lives and laid the foundation for our state’s strong recovery,” Governor Newsom said in a statement.
Ghaly will remain in his position until the end of the month. Newsom Kim JohnsonJohnson, currently the commissioner of California’s Department of Social Services, will assume the role of Health and Human Services secretary in the state. Johnson will begin his new role on October 1.
Focus on access and cost of healthcare
As the state’s top health official, Ghaly led nearly all health-related discussions in the state. He served as board chair of Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace, led a new commission mandated by law to lower health care costs and led the Healthy For All Commission, a group of experts tasked with finding a path to move California to health insurance for all.
“If there’s not a center of gravity that aligns things for change, it’s not going to happen,” said Dr. Sandra Hernandez, president of the California Healthcare Foundation and who has worked with Ghaly on several health care boards, including the state’s Affordable Care Commission and Covered California.
Advocacy and community groups have worked for decades on many of the health care reforms enacted during Ghaly’s tenure, including a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the state’s public health insurance program known as CalAIM, but Hernandez credited Ghaly with “a unique ability to see how all the pieces work together.”
“It’s extraordinary leadership to mobilize all the necessary levers of government to bring these things together and move them forward,” Hernandez said.
Newsom also plans to reform California’s behavioral health system, expanding treatment to those who need it. National Blueprint To better serve aging Californians, I launched CalRx, an initiative to get the state to manufacture and distribute its own more affordable medications, including insulin and naloxone.
Health advocacy groups praised Ghaly for prioritizing underserved areas as health minister.
“The secretary gets it. He understands that our health care system is broken and not meeting the needs of our most marginalized communities. He’s used his role to steer things in the right direction,” said Myra Alvarez, president of The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit focused on children’s health equity.
Alvarez, who sits on the Covered California board with Ghaly, said Ghaly’s work as a pediatrician gives child advocates confidence that children and families won’t be overlooked in the state’s health policies. When Newsom asked voters to approve an overhaul of the state’s behavioral health system in March, Ghaly “was particularly interested in how these resources would serve children and families,” Alvarez said.
He also spent time listening to local health care workers and advocates as he designed new benefits for people enrolled in Medicare, the state’s public insurance program for low-income people.
“The execution wasn’t perfect, but he was unfazed in making sure it worked,” Alvarez said.
Bringing the idea of community health care to the Newsom Cabinet
Before joining the Newsom administration, Ghaly had a long career in local public health, and Dr. Clemens Hong, community programs director for the Los Angeles County Department of Health, first met Ghaly during his residency when Ghaly was running a clinic in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.
Gulley and his team developed a program to help recently released inmates get medical care and reintegrate into society; the Los Angeles County Health Department adopted the idea after Gulley began working there as deputy commissioner. In 2023, under Gulley’s watch, California became the first state to offer Medicare coverage to inmates 90 days before their release, something prohibited by federal law but advocates say is essential to inmates’ recovery.
Other programs that Ghaly oversaw in Los Angeles, such as expanding insurance for undocumented immigrants, funding street health teams and providing recuperative care for hospitalized homeless people, are all folded into the state’s CalAIM program.
“He was a visionary who could take this from the local level and understand how to scale it,” Hong said. “Having someone in the state who really understands the work on the ground has been hugely impactful.”
Ghaly will long be associated with Newsom’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has frustrated some Californians with prolonged business and school closures. Those concerns were a driving force behind a failed recall effort against Newsom in 2021.
Governors Newsom and Ghaly have defended their policies as having saved lives during an unprecedented pandemic, with Governor Newsom acknowledging that if the virus was better understood today when they made these decisions, they would have opened up the state sooner.
“I think I would have done everything differently“Governor Newsom said this a year ago on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Supported by the California Healthcare Foundation (CHCF), we work to ensure people get the care they need, when they need it, and at an affordable price. For more information, visit www.chcf.org.
