Dr. Howard Zucker, MD, JD

Dr. Howard Zucker, is one of the country's most highly rated doctors. His specialties include pediatric cardiology, pediatric critical care medicine and pediatric anesthesiology and pediatric cardiac critical care medicine.

Dr. Zucker’s recent role as Deputy Director for Global Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention required that he provide broad operating authority and responsibility for overall planning, direction, and management of global strategy & programs and interfacing with The White House, United Nations, other federal agencies and international partners. He previously served as commissioner for New York State’s Department of Health, a 6000 employee, $160billion agency, including a world renowned lab. As the state’s chief physician, he oversaw the entire healthcare workforce and facilities and worked on an unprecedented number of public health crises including an Ebola outbreak, legionella in the Bronx, Zika virus and led New York through the once-in-a-century pandemic addressing all aspects of the Covid-19 response including prevention, testing, treatment, vaccination roll-out and education campaigns. He engaged with over 100 community leaders and major health clinics to stem the tide of an extraordinary measles outbreak, thereby preventing the nation from losing its measles elimination status. He advocated for and was successful in the removal of religious exemptions for vaccinations, tackled environmental health issues including water quality and safety, e-cigarette contaminants and maternal mortality issues. He oversaw the implementation of the $8billion Medicaid waiver, creation of the One Brooklyn Health System initiative affecting a culturally diverse population of a half a million, and the banning of fracking in the state.

Previously, Dr. Zucker served as Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization, where he presided over a budget of $200million and a staff of 175 public health experts and routinely partnered with the ministries of health in 193 countries and over two dozen international organizations and NGOs to reduce health disparities in low and middle income nations. He created the international taskforce to combat counterfeit medicines, led the $6billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant to bring health technologies to the developing world, addressed public health, innovation and intellectual property and managed the global essential medicines list, including the campaign to create a pediatric formulary.

He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health at HHS and as a White House Fellow and worked directly with the Secretary of HHS on the 2004 SARS outbreak, bird flu and the anthrax crisis. Dr. Zucker spearheaded tissue engineering and regenerative medicine initiatives, created and ran the nation’s 300,000+ volunteer Medical Reserve Corps, developed – through a public-private partnership - a health literacy program for women in Afghanistan that reached 4 million people and helped with the design of a children’s hospital in Iraq. He is a physician, board-certified in six specialties, having trained and/or on the faculty at Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Cornell and Einstein medical schools. He ran and restructured pediatric critical care at New York Presbyterian Hospital, including the award-winning design of the Morgan Stanley intensive care unit. Dr. Zucker has a J.D. and LL.M degrees and is a member of the Bar of New York, New Jersey and the Supreme Court. He has worked on NASA funded zero gravity experiments at McGill and MIT and served on the board of the International Space Station National Lab.

Dr. Zucker has presented hundreds of lectures on medicine, public health, policy and global health, nationally and internationally, and written dozens of peer-reviewed articles, including in The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. He has two honorary degrees and has delivered 10 graduations speeches including at the Colin Powell graduate school / City College of New York and at TEDx. He has been featured in The New Yorker, as ABC News’ Person of the Week and has written over two dozen opinion pieces in leading publications, including the cover article, 'Where Have All the Doctorts Gone?' in the January/February 2025 AARP Bulletin. Dr. Zucker’s focus is on drawing together his diverse background and using creativity to solve complex problems.