Dr. Daniel P. Edney, Mississippi’s state health officer and head of the Mississippi State Department of Health, is now under serious consideration to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as its new director, The Washington Post reported Sunday morning. Edney has served in the role of MSDH chief since 2022, when he replaced Dr. Thomas Dobbs at the head of the agency.
The Post reported that the deadline for the search is rapidly approaching, with current director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s interim appointment expiring on Thursday. Other candidates reported as front-runners in the leadership search include former Kentucky governor Dr. Ernie Fletcher and Dr. Joseph Marine, vice-director of operations, division of cardiology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Edney, formerly the president of the Mississippi State Medical Association and one of the key health leaders for Mississippi during the COVID-19 pandemic, stepped into the role as state health officer as the agency transitioned from its focus away from the public health crisis and back toward Mississippi’s overall health outcomes—traditionally some of the worst in the nation.
An analysis of that performance shows some improvement, with Mississippi’s overall health ranking improving from the bottom of the pack to No. 48 during Edney’s tenure. Mississippi has also curbed some of its rates for STDs, like syphilis, which saw explosive growth in the decade before Edney’s leadership.
“I refuse to be defeatist about where we are in health. I know that we can move from 49th to 40th to 35th to 30th just as we’ve done in education,” Edney said in 2025. “It will not happen by itself. If we continue to work together with those at the Legislature, our elected leadership, our health-care community and our partners in state government, with the Department of Health doing our part, we will make Mississippi healthier.”
The most recent initiative championed by Edney’s MSDH is the O.B. System of Care, a network of early-intervention medical care for at-risk mothers, aimed at addressing the chronic issues of health-care access and health conditions that pose the highest risk to the health of mothers and babies before the situation devolves into an emergency.
This initiative follows an escalation of Mississippi’s already severe infant mortality crisis, which remains the worst in the nation, and which prompted Edney’s MSDH to declare the growing risk to infant survival a public health emergency.
If Edney were selected as the new director of the CDC, it would represent a new world of challenges for the state’s top doctor, stepping into the role at a time of national struggle over the role of the agency in promoting public health. Edney would report directly to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose tenure at the CDC has already drawn brutal criticism from many former directors of the agency.
Kennedy Jr. fired former CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez in August of 2025, later testifying before the U.S. Senate that she refused to provide “blanket approval” for the HHS secretary’s raft of changes to vaccine recommendations and agency firings.
“Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology,” Monarez said.
As state health officer, Edney has long championed vaccines and supported robust immunization mandates for children. Until 2023, Mississippi was one of the only states in the nation that did not grant religious exemptions for childhood vaccines, until a federal judge ordered the state to allow them. Two years after that decision, Edney announced that Mississippi had lost its status as the No. 1 state for childhood vaccine rates.
“We have, as you know, led the nation for a long time because of our very strong public health law in Mississippi for vaccines for our school-aged children,” he said during a public press conference in January 2025.
Edney could not be reached for comment by publication time on Sunday morning.