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Early in the coronavirus outbreak, Dr. Sharfstein urged public health officials to focus on protecting racial and ethnic minorities, poor people and others who face social inequities. He has called for expanding housing to hold people with mild symptoms in quarantine; protecting tenants from eviction and offering incentives to food providers to deliver food to low-income neighborhoods for free or at a discount. He also proposed a federal coronavirus insurance program.

The last time his name was seriously floated for the top post, back in 2008, Dr. Sharfstein drew opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which protested his criticism of off-label drug marketing and gifts from pharmaceutical companies to physicians.

Since 2015, Dr. Sharfstein has worked at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement. He was also a former health commissioner for Baltimore.

I think Josh would be a good choice, said David Nexon, a former executive at the Advanced Medical Technology Association, known as AdvaMed. Hes a very smart guy, very committed to public health and he has a broad public health background, which would be an asset because of F.D.A.s wide-ranging responsibilities.

Dr. Woodcock, 72, also commands deep support, especially within the vast network of cancer-related patient advocacy groups, researchers and the drug companies that help finance them. But Dr. Woodcock, who has spent over 36 years working for the agency, has also generated much stiffer opposition in this round than Dr. Sharfstein.

In the past, even when the F.D.A. review of the drug was scathing, quite often Janet Woodcock or another high level F.D.A. official would be at the meeting, clearly pushing the advisory committee to recommend approval, said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a think tank and advocacy group. But by law, these advisory committees are supposed to make recommendations independent of any F.D.A. pressure.

But the loudest objections to Dr. Woodcock focus on the F.D.A.s role in the opioid epidemic during her two stints as chief of its drug division, from 1994 to 2004 and then again from 2007 until she moved to Operation Warp Speed last May. (Between those two postings, she held other roles at the agency.)

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Who Will Be the Next F.D.A. Chief? - The New York Times