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Elinore F. McCance-Katz is an American physician, academic, and government official who served as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Mental Health and Substance Use from 2017 to 2021. Prior to assuming her current role, she was the chief medical officer for the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals and a professor at the
Alpert Medical School The Warren Alpert Medical School (formerly known as Brown Medical School, previously known as Brown University School of Medicine) is the medical school of Brown University, located in Providence, Rhode Island. Originally established in 1811, ...
at
Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
. Her nomination was supported by the
American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
, which released a statement saying "Dr. McCance-Katz has a wealth of experience in academic and public sector settings in addressing mental health and substance use disorders." McCance-Katz resigned in the wake of the
2021 storming of the United States Capitol On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-United States President, U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol, U ...
, on January 7, 2021. After her 2021 resignation, McCance-Katz was hired into a senior civil service job by the
Drug Enforcement Agency The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is an agency within the Liberian government charged with fighting drug-related crimes.Eastern Connecticut State University Eastern Connecticut State University (Eastern, Eastern Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut State, or ECSU) is a public liberal arts university in Willimantic, Connecticut. Founded in 1889, it is the second-oldest campus in the Connecticut State Univ ...
in 1978. She went on to attend
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, where she received an MPhil and Ph.D. She attended medical school at the
University of Connecticut School of Medicine The University of Connecticut School of Medicine is a medical school located in Farmington, Connecticut. It was founded in 1961, enrolled students in 1968, and graduated its first class in 1972. The school is part of UConn Health, along with th ...
, where she earned her M.D. in 1987. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.


Career

McCance-Katz was on the faculty of
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
from 1991 to 1998 and later taught at the
University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
, the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Founded in 1953, Einstein operates as an independent degree-granting institution as part of t ...
,
Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virgini ...
, and the
University of California San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It condu ...
. McCance-Katz was medical director for the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs before serving as the first chief medical officer for the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA; pronounced ) is a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is charged with improving the quality and availability of treatment and rehabilitative services ...
, a position which she held from 2013 to 2015. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. McCance-Katz and her husband hold a patent for a method used to prevent urine specimen substitution in substance use screening. She has conducted substantial research into addiction, specifically
opioid Opioids are substances that act on opioid receptors to produce morphine-like effects. Medically they are primarily used for pain relief, including anesthesia. Other medical uses include suppression of diarrhea, replacement therapy for opioid us ...
addiction.


Political controversies

McCance-Katz’s work in the Trump administration was marked by several controversial statements. For example, in 2018, McCance-Katz spoke out against fentanyl test strips for people who use drugs. As she wrote in an HHS-sponsored blog, “The entire approach is based on the premise that a drug user poised to use a drug is making rational choices, is weighing pros and cons, and is thinking completely logically about his or her drug use. Based on my clinical experience, I know this could not be further from the truth.” At the same time, however, a study in the ''International Journal of Drug Policy'' came to the opposite conclusion. As pointed out in a 2017
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
article, the treatment of drug addiction has long been marked by a split between “a medical model of psychiatry, which emphasizes drug and hospital treatment and which Dr. McCance-Katz has promoted, and the so-called psychosocial, which puts more emphasis on community care and support from family and peers.” In September 2020, during the height of the Covid epidemic and just prior to the 2020 presidential election, McCance-Katz spoke on a podcast posted on the official HHS website: “What is this nonsense that somehow it’s unsafe to return to school?... There was no agreement to this, to this nonstop restriction and quarantining and isolation and taking away anything that makes people happy.... You can’t go to a movie, you can’t go to a football game.... We shut down the entire country before the virus, in my opinion, had a chance to get around the entire country. … We used a sledgehammer when I think we needed a scalpel.” As she asserted, “I just wish that the media would get honest about its coverage of Covid.... lost in all of this response to Covid and nonstop 24/7 horrors of Covid and if you can't find something to talk about, it appears to me they make things up. It just does.”


References


External links


Biography at Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCance-Katz, Elinore Living people Eastern Connecticut State University alumni Yale University alumni University of Connecticut alumni Obama administration personnel Trump administration personnel 21st-century American physicians Year of birth missing (living people) Brown University faculty