From the complexities of the ambitious public-private partnership called Operation Warp Speed, to the problematic early rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines late last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been a central player in formulating the United States’ response to the coronavirus.
But the pandemic isn’t the only issue HHS is asked to manage. Tasked with safeguarding the health and wellbeing of all Americans, HHS oversees a sprawling family of agencies that deal not only with disease research and prevention, but also drug, food and cosmetics safety, and many other services ranging from Head Start to Medicare to refugee resettlement.
To support this vast portfolio, HHS commands fully one quarter of the overall federal budget.
The United States’ involvement in health care traces all the way back to 1798, when President John Adams signed the Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen. This established marine hospitals at America’s major ports to provide medical services for sailors, essential workers whose hard lives at sea and visits to far-flung ports left them susceptible to both injuries and disease. In an additional effort to prevent the spread of foreign contagions, Congress later passed legislation extending this care to immigrants arriving on American shores.
During the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln appointed a chemist to work in the newly established Department of Agriculture, this led to the development of a Bureau of Chemistry. Forty-odd years later, that Bureau was transformed into the Food and Drug Administration with the passage in 1906 of the Pure Food and Drugs Act.
Likewise, other agencies were established over time to grapple with various health and safety issues that cropped up as the nation grew. In 1953, under a sweeping reorganization plan, these all coalesced under the newly formed Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed a woman as the first Secretary of HEW. Oveta Culp Hobby was a Texan who never graduated from college, but she had distinguished herself from an early age as parliamentarian in the Lone Star State’s House of Representatives. When World War II broke out, Hobby was named the director of the Women’s Army Corps. Over the course of her military service she achieved the rank of colonel and became the first woman in the Army to receive the Distinguished Service Medal.
As head of HEW, Hobby oversaw the Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Education and a handful of other concerns. She worked on initiatives related to juvenile delinquency, water purification, mental health, polio vaccines, and an early (and unsuccessful) bid to provide government support for low-cost health insurance.
Building Back Better:
the Department of Health and Human Services
by Barbara Lloyd McMichael