1. Leana Sheryle Wen is an American physician, author, professor, speaker, consultant, columnist, and television commentator.
45 Facts About Leana Wen
1. 2.
Leana Wen is former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore and former president of Planned Parenthood.
3.
Leana Wen was asked to testify four times to Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, including twice to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
4.
Leana Wen has garnered criticism by some public health advocates for her views on the pandemic.
5.
Leana Wen serves as a public health professor at George Washington University and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
6.
Leana Wen is a columnist for The Washington Post and a medical analyst for CNN.
7.
Leana Wen's father delivered newspapers and was a dishwasher, later serving as technology manager for The Chinese Daily News in Los Angeles.
8.
Leana Wen married South Africa native Sebastian Neil Walker in Boston in February 2012, after a blessing ceremony in Cape Town in November 2011.
9.
Leana Wen then received a Doctor of Medicine from Washington University School of Medicine in 2007 and received a Rhodes Scholarship to study in England at Merton College, Oxford, where she earned two master's degrees: a Master of Science in economic and social history in 2007 and another in Chinese studies in 2008.
10.
Leana Wen met her future husband, Sebastian Walker, during her time in England.
11.
In 2005, Leana Wen took a one-year leave of absence from medical school to serve as the national president of the American Medical Student Association, where she led campaigns to increase healthcare access, decrease health disparities, and combat conflicts of interest between physicians and the pharmaceutical companies who notoriously use attractive sales representatives and free gifts to influence doctors, especially young interns and medical residents.
12.
Leana Wen became involved in US and international health policy during medical school, serving in Geneva, Switzerland, as a fellow for the World Health Organization and in Rwanda as a fellow for the US Department of Defense.
13.
Leana Wen started working in emergency medicine at BWH and Mass General before moving to the ER at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, where she became a professor in emergency and health policy, and the Director of Patient-Centered Care Research.
14.
Leana Wen served as a consultant to the Brookings Institution and the China Medical Board, and conducted international health systems research including in South Africa, Slovenia, Nigeria, Singapore, and China.
15.
From December 2014 until October 2018, Leana Wen served as the health commissioner for Baltimore City under two mayors.
16.
Leana Wen was first appointed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake; in December 2016, she was reappointed by Mayor Catherine Pugh.
17.
Leana Wen resigned in 2018, when she was appointed head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
18.
Leana Wen wrote an opinion editorial criticizing proposed changes to the Title X program which would affect health clinics in Baltimore providing reproductive health care for low income women.
19.
Leana Wen testified to the US Senate HELP Committee and US House Oversight Committee on Baltimore's overdose prevention efforts.
20.
Leana Wen led a group of state and city health officials to petition the Food and Drug Administration on adding black box warnings to opioids and benzodiazepines.
21.
Leana Wen convened doctors and public health leaders to sign the Baltimore Statement on the Importance of Childhood Vaccinations and to successfully advocate to ban the sale of powdered alcohol in Maryland and synthetic drugs in Baltimore.
22.
On September 18,2018, Leana Wen was appointed president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
23.
Leana Wen was the first medical doctor to serve in the role in nearly 50 years and was the first woman doctor ever to do so.
24.
Leana Wen envisioned a new direction for discourse surrounding Planned Parenthood, endeavoring to frame abortion access as an issue of healthcare rather than politics.
25.
Leana Wen wanted to expand the services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics to include treatment for medical concerns unrelated to reproduction, especially treatment for opioid addiction and easy access to Naloxone.
26.
Leana Wen spoke out about her own experiences as a cervical cancer survivor who struggled with infertility, and about a miscarriage she suffered while in the role.
27.
In July 2019, Leana Wen was forced to resign from her position after only 8 months.
28.
On July 19,2019, Leana Wen published an opinion editorial in The New York Times which set forth the circumstances underlying her departure from Planned Parenthood.
29.
Leana Wen is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
30.
Leana Wen started writing for The Washington Post as a contributing op-ed writer in 2019.
31.
In 2023, Leana Wen received attention for a piece claiming that Covid deaths were being over counted, with some claiming vindication after claims of over counting deaths were decried as conspiracy theories years earlier.
32.
Leana Wen has appeared frequently on CNN during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2022 monkeypox outbreak as an on-air medical analyst.
33.
Leana Wen was a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Psychology Today on patient empowerment and healthcare reform.
34.
Leana Wen was an advisor to the then-newly established Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and an advisor to the Lown Institute and the Medical Education Futures Study.
35.
Leana Wen was the founder of Who's My Doctor, an international campaign that called for transparency in medicine.
36.
Leana Wen is a frequent keynote speaker on healthcare reform, education, and leadership, and has given several TED Talks.
37.
Leana Wen's TED talk on transparency in medicine has been viewed over 1.9 million times.
38.
Leana Wen's evolving views on the COVID-19 pandemic have garnered support and controversy from both sides of the political spectrum.
39.
The petition claimed that Leana Wen "has promoted unscientific, unsafe, ableist, fatphobic, and unethical practices during the COVID-19 pandemic", citing her comment regarding treating COVID as endemic for example.
40.
The petition caused a heated response from all perspectives, and eventually resulted in Leana Wen decided not to attend APHA out of safety concerns.
41.
On December 29,2024, during a CBS Face The Nation broadcast, Dr Leana Wen commented on the bird flu testing issue, saying that the absence of widespread testing does not indicate that the virus is not present in humans.
42.
Leana Wen argued that the federal government should have learned from the experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and be proactive in ensuring that testing is readily available to the public.
43.
Leana Wen emphasized that there should not be a delay in making tests accessible while waiting for laboratories to analyze the cases and assess their severity.
44.
Dr Leana Wen urged the Biden administration to approve the H5N1 vaccine.
45.
On March 11,2025, Leana Wen wrote an op-ed on Washington Post showing support for Trump's NIH and FDA nominees, Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary respectively.