Humayun Chaudhry - Health Commissioner

Health Commissioner

As Commissioner of Health Services for New York's Suffolk County from 2007 to 2009, Chaudhry supervised 1,500 employees and oversaw an annual budget of $400 million. He created a Division of Preventive Medicine within the department through a restructuring of 72 personnel that was approved by Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and the Suffolk County Legislature and which went into effect on January 1, 2008. "We can't make people live forever," Chaudhry said in an article in the New York Times about the new division, "but we can prevent premature deaths."

During the 2009 flu pandemic due to Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, Chaudhry was praised for taking a cautious public health approach to the new virus, recommending closure of schools when needed and setting up e-mail alerts for Suffolk County administrators. Describing his department's public health response to the 2009 flu pandemic in an Op-Ed article in Newsday, Chaudhry noted the advantages of advanced technology (e.g., BlackBerry, Twitter) in tracking the virus and keeping in close communication with local, state and federal health officials. Named "Long Islander of the Week" and "Dr. Stay-Well," Newsday recognized Chaudhry for "intently but calmly... (steering) the public on a better middle course between apathy and alarm." Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy described him as someone with "an uncanny ability to take complex medical issues and explain them in layman's terms to the public," adding that Chaudhry "helped to guide the county through a number of health crises during his tenure in a masterful way."

During Chaudhry's tenure, Suffolk County adopted a ban on trans fats, derived from partially hydrogenated oil, from its restaurants in 2009. Suffolk County became the first jurisdiction in the United States to ban the sale of baby bottles containing the chemical Bisphenol A, in a measure that Chaudhry said would be enforced with the assistance of consumer complaints. Justifying Suffolk County's actions against Bisphenol A, Chaudhry said, "There was enough evidence to warrant some type of intervention before that final study is done that shows this to be harmful." The County's lawmakers also voted to support a proposal (the first in the nation) to ban the indoor use of electronic cigarettes in public buildings, a move Chaudhry supported.