Maryland’s public health chief prepares to tackle health disparities

Laura Herrera Scott, Gov. Wes Moore’s newly appointed acting secretary of health, inherits an agency grappling with the effects of some of the biggest challenges facing the state, including a new phase of the coronavirus pandemic, health disparities and access to behavioral-health treatment. Those who know her say Herrera Scott, who was a major in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve and was deployed to Iraq, has a long history of marrying clinical and policy knowledge to build consensus and lead. She has been the chief medical officer of the Baltimore City Health Department, Maryland’s deputy secretary of health in Martin O’Malley’s gubernatorial administration from 2011 to 2015 and has a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.