Erica Schwartz

Erica G. Schwartz is a retired U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps rear admiral who last served as the deputy surgeon general of the United States from January 2019 to April 2021. As a Commissioned Corps officer, she served with the U.S. Coast Guard as their Chief of Health Services and Chief of Preventive Medicine at the U.S. Coast Guard headquarters and became its principal expert on flu pandemics. Prior to becoming Deputy Surgeon General, she served as the Coast Guard's Chief Medical Officer from 2015 to 2019. She retired in April 2021 after over 27 years of combined uniformed service. Early life and education Schwartz graduated with a degree in biomedical engineering from Brown University in 1994 and was awarded a doctorate in medicine from the same institution in 1998. She later attended the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and was awarded a master's degree in public health in 2000 and completed an occupational and environmental medicine residency in 2001. Schwartz also has a Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland and has been admitted to the District of Columbia Bar. Career Schwartz served in the United States Navy in Annapolis, Maryland and Portsmouth, Virginia until 2005 when she joined the U.S. Public Health Service and transferred from the Navy to the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Early in her career, as a Navy officer, she served as an occupational medicine physician with postings that included chief of the occupational medicine, immunization and preventative medicine departments of the Annapolis, Maryland Naval Medical Clinic. Schwartz also served at the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center in Portsmouth, Virginia. Schwartz served as Chief of Health Services and Chief of Preventive Medicine at the U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C. where she implemented disease surveillance, vaccination, screening and NBC countermeasure programs. She wrote the service's first ever pandemic influenza, anthrax and smallpox vaccination, quarantinable communicable disease, periodic health assessment and HIV policies. Schwartz also worked to develop health protection guidance for armed forces deployments following Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, the 2009 flu pandemic, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the West Africa Ebola outbreak. She was appointed as the Coast Guard's principal expert on flu pandemics.