Comes on the heels of several controversies.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Dr. Nirav Shah, the Health Commissioner for the state of New York, has announced his resignation from the state’s highest medical office.
Shah’s resignation was submitted last week, and his departure comes amidst several controversies regarding his handling of some of the state’s biggest health and medical concerns. Shah will be temporarily replaced by Dr. Howard Zucker, who has been the deputy Health Commissioner since September of last year, until a permanent replacement is found.
Shah has been New York’s Health Commissioner since 2011, when he was appointed by Democratic Governor Anthony Cuomo. For nearly his entire tenure in the position, Shah has been under criticism for several issues; most recently, his alleged inability – or, as some have claimed, deliberate lack of action – in inspecting various abortion clinics throughout the state, to make sure they are up to standards.
Additionally, Shah has been at the center of a statewide debate on authorizing hydrofracking, the practice of drilling for natural gas, in various shale deposits in the northern part of the state. Environmentalists heavily opposed the proposal, and called on the state’s Health Commissioner to take into account the potential for water pollution and other hazardous side effects that would be caused by drilling. Supporter of hydrofracking have said that drilling will create new jobs and boost the state’s economy, but throughout the process, Shah had been reticent to come down on either side.
The New Yorkers Against Fracking organization issued a statement immediately after Shah’s resignation was made public, saying that ““No matter who the Department of Health Commissioner is, the science is clear that fracking contaminates our water, pollutes the air, makes people sick, and must be banned. Governor Cuomo has a responsibility to protect the health and water of all New Yorkers and generations to come, which requires rejecting fracking.”
The exact reason for Shah’s resignation was not disclosed, although Cuomo said that Shah’s public sector salary of around $136,000 most likely dissuaded him from staying in such a high-pressure job any longer. Talking to Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Cuomo said that the state’s current payment structure could not support what Shah likely wanted to make, and did not blame Shah for wanting to leave for more lucrative offers in the private sector. Shah, however, has not announced what his next job will be.
A native of Buffalo, New York, Shah is an honors graduate of Harvard College, where he went for his undergraduate education. He then went to the Yale School of Medicine, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles and a National Research Service Award Fellow at New York University.
Prior to his term as New York’s 15th Health Commissioner, Shah was an “Attending Physician at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, Associate Investigator at the Geisinger Center for Health Research in central Pennsylvania, and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Value and Comparative Effectiveness at NYU Langone Medical Center.”