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State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box, who oversaw Indiana’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, will retire at month’s end after more than five years in the post, officials said Friday.
Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office said Box had notified the governor that she will retire May 31. Holcomb has appointed Dr. Lindsay Weaver, chief medical officer of the Indiana Department of Health, as the state’s next health commissioner and she will assume that role June 1, his office said.
Holcomb said he and Box “began discussing this inevitability nearly a year ago” and he’s grateful she agreed to stay on as health commissioner until now. Holcomb appointed Box health commissioner in October 2017, replacing Dr. Jerome Adams, who left the post to become then-President Donald Trump’s surgeon general.
Holcomb’s office said that among the challenges Box faced during her tenure was leading Indiana’s response to COVID-19 pandemic, calling it “the most significant public health event in a century.”
“Through coordination efforts with local, state and federal agencies and health partners, countless lives were saved,” the governor’s office said in a news release.
Box said the last five and a half years “have been filled with challenges and opportunities unlike any that public health has ever encountered.” She said Indiana’s public health workforce “met those challenges with a heart and determination that have inspired me every day.”
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