Leana Wen

Leana Sheryle Wen (born Wen Linyan; January 27, 1983) is an American physician, author, professor, speaker, consultant, newspaper columnist and television commentator.

She is former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore and former president of Planned Parenthood.

She has written two books based on her experiences as a medical professional.

Wen has served as a public health communicator during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2022 mpox outbreak, appearing frequently on CNN as an on-air medical analyst.

Wen was asked to testify four times to Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, including twice to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Currently, Wen serves as a public health professor at George Washington University and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

She is also a columnist for The Washington Post and a medical analyst for CNN.

Born Wen Linyan in Shanghai, China on January 27, 1983, to Ying Sandy Zhang and Xiaolu Wen, Wen moved with her parents to the U.S. when she was eight, by then having the English name Leana Sheryle Wen.

Granted political asylum, the Wen family lived in Compton and East Los Angeles in Southern California.

Attending the Early Entrance Program (EEP) at California State University, Los Angeles starting at age 13, Wen graduated summa cum laude at age 18 with a bachelor's degree in biochemistry, in 2001.

She received a Doctor of Medicine from Washington University School of Medicine and has two master's degrees, one in Economic and Social History and another in Modern Chinese Studies, both from the Merton College, Oxford in England where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

She also met her future husband, Sebastian Walker, during her time in England.

In 2003, Wen and her family became U.S. citizens.

In 2005, Wen took a one-year leave of absence from medical school to serve as the national president of the American Medical Student Association, where she led campaigns to increase healthcare access, decrease health disparities, and combat conflicts of interest between physicians and the pharmaceutical companies who notoriously use attractive sales representatives and free gifts to influence doctors, especially young interns and medical residents.

Wen became involved in U.S. and international health policy during medical school, serving in Geneva, Switzerland as a fellow for the World Health Organization and in Rwanda as a fellow for the U.S. Department of Defense.

In addition, she advised the U.S. Congress on physician workforce and medical education through her appointment on the Council on Graduate Medical Education by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Following medical school, Wen completed a residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) and a clinical fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

She is board certified in emergency medicine.

Wen started working in emergency medicine at BWH and Mass General before moving to the ER at the George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC, where she became a professor in emergency and health policy, and the Director of Patient-Centered Care Research.

She served as a consultant to the Brookings Institution and the China Medical Board, and conducted international health systems research including in South Africa, Slovenia, Nigeria, Singapore, and China.

Wen's mother, who died of breast cancer in 2010, first worked as a hotel room cleaner and video store clerk before becoming an elementary school teacher.

Her father delivered newspapers and was a dishwasher, later serving as technology manager for The Chinese Daily News in Los Angeles.

Wen married South Africa native Sebastian Neil Walker in Boston in February 2012, after a blessing ceremony in Cape Town in November 2011.

From December 2014 until October 2018, Wen served as the health commissioner for Baltimore City under two mayors.

She directed the city's public health recovery efforts after the 2015 Baltimore riots, including ensuring prescription medication access to seniors after the closure of 13 pharmacies, and developing the Mental Health/Trauma Recovery Plan, with 24-hour crisis counseling, and healing circles and group counseling in schools, community groups, and churches.

Following the riots, the Baltimore City Health Department team launched numerous campaigns, including a citywide trauma response plan, youth health and wellness strategy, violence prevention programs, B'Healthy in B'More blog, and B'More Health Talks, a biweekly town hall and podcast series on health disparities.

She was first appointed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake; in December 2016, she was reappointed by Mayor Catherine Pugh.

In March 2016, she was invited by the White House to join President Barack Obama and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta on a panel discussion, where she spoke about Baltimore's response.

She convened doctors and public health leaders to sign the Baltimore Statement on the Importance of Childhood Vaccinations and to successfully advocate to ban the sale of powdered alcohol in Maryland and synthetic drugs in Baltimore.

Congressman Elijah Cummings cited Wen's efforts to combat the opioid epidemic in Baltimore and sought her help in creating national legislation to change how the United States fights it.

They have two children: a son born in 2017 and a daughter born in 2020.

As a result of her own asthma attacks as a child and seeing a neighbor's child die of an asthma attack, Wen decided that she wanted to become an emergency room physician.

She resigned in 2018, when she was appointed head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In her role as commissioner, Wen oversaw the Baltimore City Health Department, an agency of 1,100 employees and $130her million annual budget with wide-ranging responsibilities, including management of acute communicable diseases, animal control, chronic disease prevention, emergency preparedness, food service inspections, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, maternal-child health, school health, senior services, and youth violence issues.

In March 2018, on behalf of Wen and the Baltimore City Health Department, the City of Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting teen pregnancy prevention funds, which resulted in a federal judge ordering the Trump administration to restore $5 million in grant funding to two Baltimore-based teen pregnancy prevention programs.

She wrote an opinion editorial criticizing proposed changes to the Title X program which would affect health clinics in Baltimore providing reproductive health care for low income women.

This court decision was later reversed by the 9th Circuit court, enabling the Trump administration to withhold Title X funding for abortion.

Wen has led implementation of the Baltimore opioid overdose prevention and response plan, which includes a blanket prescription for the opioid antidote, naloxone; "hotspotting" and street outreach teams to target individuals most at risk; training family/friends on naloxone use; and launching a new public education campaign.

Wen testified to the U.S. Senate HELP Committee and U.S. House Oversight Committee on Baltimore's overdose prevention efforts.

She led a group of state and city health officials to petition the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on adding black box warnings to opioids and benzodiazepines.