The Pennsylvania Senate on Tuesday unanimously confirmed Dr. Rachel Levine’s nomination as the state’s physician general.
Levine has been in the role in an acting capacity since Gov. Tom Wolf appointed her in the beginning of the year. She is the highest-ranking openly transgender public official in the state and the first trans person to hold a top government post in Pennsylvania.
“It’s very gratifying,” she told PGN Wednesday. “I was absolutely thrilled. Gov. Wolf didn’t shy away from nominating me because I’m an openly transgender woman. I was nominated because of my qualifications and professional background, and I was confirmed on that basis. And that’s the way it should be.”
After the excitement of the day, Levine joked that she cooked dinner — bison burgers and corn — for herself and her son and had a quiet evening at home. PGN’s full interview with the Physician General will run next week.
Levine, a Middletown resident, was most recently a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, vice-chair for clinical affairs for the Department of Pediatrics and chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders at the Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. She graduated from Harvard College in 1979 and went on to Tulane University School of Medicine, where she graduated in 1983. She completed her training in pediatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, where she practiced from 1988-93.
Jessica Rothchild, president of the board of Equality Pennsylvania, on which Levine previously sat, congratulated Levine Tuesday, calling her an “excellent physician. We look forward to her tenure as the Physician General of Pennsylvania.”
State Rep. Dan Frankel also welcomed the news.
“This is a history-making cabinet first for Pennsylvania, and I congratulate not only Dr. Levine but also Gov. Tom Wolf for nominating her,” said Frankel, co-chair of the state legislature’s LGBT Equality Caucus and longtime lead sponsor of the state’s LGBT nondiscrimination bill. “By confirming Dr. Levine, the Senate has not only provided Pennsylvanians with a quality physician general, [but] a majority of our state Senate has affirmed that being LGBT should not matter in employment. What should matter is whether the person will do a good job, and Dr. Levine will.” n