Dr. Demetre Daskalakis – who was among several employees who publicly resigned from a leadership position at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August – is returning to the local health sector. He has been appointed Chief Medical Officer for the historic NYC health organization, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.

“My career has taken me from local to federal,” the out physician told health and science publication STAT10 after his appointment. “This is when it’s time to go back to local.”

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“Demetre has a wealth of experience that will help him guide Callen-Lorde through new clinical initiatives and challenges while remaining steadfast to our mission to care for our communities regardless of ability to pay,” Callen-Lorde said in an announcement of Daskalakis’ appointment. “His passion and experience make him particularly suited for this new role.”

The infectious disease specialist started his career doing HIV clinical work in New York City as an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital. He moved on to the NYC Department of Health, where he served as deputy commissioner before joining the CDC. 

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Daskalakis came to public prominence as head of the Biden administration’s Mpox outbreak response in 2022, which employed a successful strategy of “Education and outreach, as well as vaccination” based on hard data.

“Infections don’t heed orders,” he told LGBTQ Nation at the time.

Now Daskalakis is “taking his skills back to the city where they were honed.”

For the moment, Washington is “an environment where I really don’t think that federal public health is able to actually execute on its mission,” he said.

Daskalakis reached a breaking point at the CDC over the summer as the full extent of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-science agenda was coming into view.

Citing “radical non-transparency,” “unskilled manipulation of data,” and “people of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor,” Daskalakis, then the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the agency, resigned in August, following Kennedy’s firing of CDC director Susan Monarez.

“After much contemplation and reflection on recent developments and perspectives brought to light by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I find that the views he and his staff have shared challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people,” Daskalakis wrote in a searing condemnation of the current administration’s stewardship of the nation’s public health agencies.

“Enough is enough,” he said.

Daskalakis was introduced to the clinics at Callen-Lorde as an NYU medical student on rotations in 1997. More than 25 years later, the organization honored him at this year’s annual Community Health Awards for his numerous contributions to public health.

Reflecting on his early years as a physician, Daskalakis said, “At Callen-Lorde, I learned the true meaning of service: to uplift and protect the very community I hold most dear. I witnessed a safe space based in science, a mission lifted by and for community.”  

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