Being nominated to serve as New Jersey’s Health Commissioner is both an honor and a profound responsibility. In this role, every decision has consequences for health and well-being of New Jerseyans. If confirmed, I will bring everything that I have to this sacred duty.

I’d like to take a quick moment and thank everyone gathered behind me today—friends, family, and the true superstars of the Department of Health, our team members. Special shout out to my mother, Arlene Garnett, for traveling to be here. Truthfully, she deserves much of the credit for me sitting here today.

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, with a visceral understanding of how health—and its absence—shapes lives.

Before I was born, my mom lost her dad, Walter Bloomfield, to heart disease. A WWII veteran, he was just 51 years old.

When I was 12, I began helping my grandmother, Maggie, with her insulin injections, back when you still had to draw insulin with a syringe before we had the pens and pumps we have today.

During my early college days, I remember our family’s fight to move my grandmother, Doris, to a better nursing home so she could get the care she deserved as she battled Alzheimer’s.

And nearly 12 years ago, I buried my own father, Raymond, when he was just 56, in part due to the barriers in our fragmented behavioral health system.

These experiences and more have shaped my commitment to public health and to ensuring that everyone has a fair chance at a long and healthy life.

After spending my summers volunteering at Richmond Community Hospital while I was in high school, I went to the University of Pittsburgh expecting to become an emergency room physician.

But a summer in Tanzania changed that plan.

I spent two months at a hospital in rural Karagwe during what I learned was one of the longest and hardest malaria outbreaks the region had seen. After the rainy season, sick children and desperate families crowded into the hospital.

I watched as the hospital’s pediatric ward filled up with these tiny, sick patients—and then the courtyard, where patients were treated on foam mattresses under a tent.

These children were dying—thousands of them died that summer. And they were dying from something preventable, something that could be stopped with bed nets and medications that I myself was taking that only cost a few dollars.

I returned home with a question that has guided my career ever since: How do we keep people healthy, so we don’t have to respond after they become sick?

That question led me to epidemiology and a career in public service.

In Washington, my work focused on reducing health care costs and using data to inform policies to ensure that the trillions of dollars we invest in our healthcare system would actually be spent on good health, not just more treatment.

Just across the bridge from Camden, in Philadelphia, I served as Deputy Health Commissioner and Chief Epidemiologist, where I led efforts to build coalition among health systems and worked on the front lines of the opioid epidemic at its height.

In Charlotte, on my first day, I went straight from new hire orientation to the emergency operations center, as the first cases of COVID-19 were hitting Mecklenburg County. The next year, I was leading the department—managing the final phases of the pandemic, rebuilding a traumatized and exhausted workforce, and refocusing our work on our broader mission to protect and promote good health for all.

Across these roles, I learned the same lesson: Public health leaders must be visible.

We must meet people where they are, listen to their experiences, and build trust. That’s how policy becomes real progress.

I come to New Jersey with deep respect for what I still have to learn.

New Jersey is not Philadelphia. It's not the Carolinas.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve traveled across north, central, and south Jersey meeting people and learning about our health system. I’ve visited hospitals, FQHCs, community health clinics, harm reduction programs, county health departments, and our state psychiatric hospitals.

What I’ve seen is a state rich with dedicated professionals whose front-line expertise must guide our work here in Trenton.

Our mandate at the New Jersey Department of Health is as broad as it is critical: We protect the safety of our food and water, monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, prepare for public health emergencies, license and regulate thousands of health facilities, maintain essential health data, and operate prevention programs across the state. We protect our elders by holding the owners and operators of the more than 350 long-term care facilities accountable with the goal of safe, stable, and dignified care for all. At our state’s four psychiatric hospitals, we provide care for more than 1,200 of our state’s most vulnerable residents.

At its core, public health is public safety. When we fail, people suffer. And when we succeed, entire communities have an opportunity to live longer, healthier lives.

This department must focus not only on the health challenges in front of us; we must be prepared for the health challenges to come.

For example: This summer, the FIFA World Cup will bring more than one million visitors to New Jersey.

Our department, alongside our partners, will be ready with strengthened food and water protection, enhanced disease surveillance, and emergency responders prepared to mobilize as needed.

At the same time, we continue to monitor emerging threats like measles and avian flu that could attack our communities.

Meeting these immediate challenges must go hand in hand with addressing long-standing health disparities.

Across the country and right here in New Jersey, your zip code remains one of the strongest predictors of your health.

Where you live—the air you breathe, the food available in your neighborhood, the stress you carry, the quality of your housing, and the economic and educational opportunities available to you—can determine whether you live a long, healthy life or die too young from preventable causes.

For example, Black mothers and babies in New Jersey are still nearly eight and four times more likely to die during pregnancy or in the year after birth compared to White women and infants.

That is unacceptable. And it is often preventable.

I will continue working with the Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority and partners across the state to further close these gaps. I believe New Jersey has the talent and the leadership to lead the nation in solving this crisis.

We also face a real mental health crisis, especially among our children. That’s why I’m proud our department will lead Governor Sherrill’s effort to enhance our focus on youth mental health and better protect children online.

Our healthcare system must treat the whole person—and it must reach people where they are.

New Jersey is home to world-class hospitals, innovative providers, and groundbreaking research. But if care is unaffordable or out of reach, its quality becomes irrelevant.

Affordability is, in fact, the foundation of access.

Too many families are forced to choose between getting care and paying for everything else. I am committed to working across state government—from Human Services to Banking and Insurance—to lower costs, protect access, and improve quality.

At the same time, our health care system faces significant disruption. Federal Medicaid cuts will strip billions each year from New Jersey’s hospitals and public health programs, putting coverage and essential protections for hundreds of thousands of residents at risk. And more threats to evidence-based public health practice loom from the federal government and the courts.

The impacts will fall hardest on communities where care is already a challenge to access.

In partnership with the Department of Human Services, we will leverage Rural Health Transformation funding to support innovative solutions in rural health care deserts. But to be honest—those resources don’t come close to filling the hole of the federal cuts coming our way.

In closing, the work of public health has never been more urgent.

We are navigating unprecedented uncertainty from our federal partners.

In this moment, we must continue to stand firmly with established medical evidence—especially as political ideology threatens our nation’s immunization system—one of the most successful public health achievements in modern history.

Even with these challenges, we will remain committed to our mission to protect the health of New Jerseyans.

We will focus on strategies proven to save lives, discontinue those that data show are not working, and strengthen partnerships across government, health systems, and neighboring states.

Ultimately, our success depends on strong partnerships—and among the most important partners in that effort is all of you and your colleagues in the Legislature.

I look forward to working together with you to build a New Jersey where health outcomes are not determined by where someone lives and where our state is ready for whatever public health challenges lie ahead.

Thank you, Chairman Stack and members of the committee. I look forward to your questions.

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The New Jersey Department of Health is a nationally accredited health department working to ensure that all New Jerseyans live long, healthy lives and reach their fullest potential. With more than 6,000 employees, the Department serves to protect the public’s health, promote healthy communities, and continue to improve the quality of health care in New Jersey.