Allegheny County Health Department names new director

A search committee made up of members of the Allegheny County Board of Health and the community has selected Dr. Debra Bogen as its nominee to lead the county Health Department.

Bogen, the vice chair for education in the UPMC Children’s Hospital pediatric department, will replace Dr. Karen Hacker, who stepped down from the post in July. Hacker took a position as the director of the Centers for Disease Control National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Ronald A. Sugar, deputy director of administration, has served as interim director.

“Despite looking nationally, we finally realized that the best candidate was right here in our own backyard,” said Dr. Lee Harrison, chair of the Allegheny County Board of Health. “Dr. Bogen has been deeply ingrained in the public health of our community during her long and distinguished career at the University of Pittsburgh.”

Bogen earned her medical degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and completed post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins University.

She is one of the founders of the Mid-Atlantic Mothers’ Milk Bank and an advocate for issues related to maternal and child health, an issue she said she will prioritize as health department director.

“We have and must decrease our racially disparate maternal and infant mortality rates,” Bogen said. “I’ve committed to making this a priority in working with community partners, advocates, organizations and agencies on this vital public health issue.”

The board of health, which oversees the county health department, voted Wednesday during a regularly scheduled board meeting to accept Bogen as the nominee.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health must sign off on the candidate before she officially starts May 4. Bogen’s salary will be $250,000.

Bogen assumes the leadership of the health department amid concerns over a coronavirus outbreak and months of calls from community and activist groups asking the health department to step up enforcement around air quality.

Bogen deferred questions about the county’s response to the coronavirus to current members of the department and the board of health who have been involved in those efforts.

On air quality, Bogen said she is eager to learn more about this field and to apply the first-hand experience she has with working with pediatric patients with asthma who have been impacted.

“We all want the same thing for our county, which is clean air, healthy families, healthy children, healthy people, so we need to really work all together, and that includes talking to industry as part of that effort,” Bogen said.

The nine-member search committee was co-chaired by Dr. Edith Shapira, who serves as a member of the Board of Health, and Heinz Endowments President Grant Oliphant.

Three other board of health members and four community members also participated in the search committee: Dr. Lee Harrison, Dr. Donald Burke, Joylette Portlock, Marc Cherna, Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, Yvonne Cook and A. Everette James III.

National executive search firm Krauthamer & Associates, Inc. assisted with the search.

Bogen was not among the first round of candidates considered for the job, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said. She hadn’t applied yet.

The committee had chosen a different candidate from outside of the Pittsburgh area months ago. That person was unable to accept the job offer because of personal family issues.

Bogen applied when the national search was opened a second time, Fitzgerald said.

“We’re still trying to find someone who has something negative to say about Dr. Bogen, because everyone in this town who has worked with her talks about her brilliance, her brilliance in her medical career, but also her collaboration with people within the community,” Fitzgerald said. “How she reaches out and brings everybody to the table and hears all the opinions as she tries to use the best medical evidence to solve problems and meet challenges.”