Biden Picks Transwoman For Assistant Health Secretary

Joe Biden has nominated Pennsylvania health secretary Dr Rachel Levine as assistant US health secretary. If confirmed, she will become the first openly transgender federal official to win Senate confirmation.

Here are ten things to know about Biden's nominee Rachel Levine:

1. 64-year-old Levine is a health expert, who works as a paediatrician. She began her medical career at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

2. Levine is a graduate from Harvard, who is also the president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

3. Levine is currently the secretary of health in Pennsylvania and has been leading the fight against COVID-19 in the state.

4. She is also a pediatrics and psychiatry professor at Penn State College of Medicine.

5. Her expertise includes work on children and adolescent medicine and eating disorders among other. She has written in the past on a variety of topics, including the opioid crisis and LGBT+ medicine.

6. This former physician general became one of a few transgender people serving in appointed or elected positions in the US when Democratic governor Tom Wolf appointed her as health secretary in 2017.

7. Before Biden has tapped her for the position, she served as the state's physician general in 2015 and assistant health secretary in 2017.

8. "Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic," Biden said in a statement about the nomination.

10. Levine will work in Mr Biden’s cabinet alongside Health and Human Services secretary nominee Xavier Becerra, who serves as California’s attorney general.