Rachel Levine

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Breaking my "no living people" rule once more to mark this historic day. Seeing as I’ve already done a post about Kamala Harris, I thought I’d mark the US Inauguration by celebrating another history-making woman: Rachel Levine who will become the first ever openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Rachel Levine Bio - Affair, Divorce, Net Worth, Ethnicity ...

Dr Rachel L. Levine (born 1957) is an American pediatrician serving as the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health. She also serves as Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. She is one of only a handful of openly transgender government officials in the United States.  On January 19, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he will nominate Levine to be Assistant Secretary for Health, making her the first ever openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate.

Levine was born in 1957 in Massachusetts. She is Jewish, another win for diversity in the American government.

Levine graduated from Harvard College and the Tulane University School of Medicine and completed a residency in pediatrics and fellowship in adolescent medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, New York.

After moving from Manhattan to central Pennsylvania in 1993, she created Penn State Hershey Medical Center's adolescent medicine division and eating disorders clinic.

In 2015, Levine was nominated by Pennsylvania Governor-elect Tom Wolf to be Pennsylvania's Physician General. In her capacity as Physician General, Levine signed an order that allowed law enforcement officers to carry the anti-overdose medication naloxone. She has credited the drug with saving the lives of almost 1,000 opioid users who had overdosed. 

In July 2017 Governor Wolf appointed Levine as Secretary of Health, and she was unanimously confirmed and has become the public face of the state’s coronavirus response.

In nominating her, Biden said:

“Dr Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond.”

A historic day indeed, and one which hopefully marks a new dawn after Trump's anti-trans policies and the shocking statistics of anti-trans violence in the UK. 

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