Barbara Ferrer is an American health executive, serving as the Director of

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) provides public health services to Los Angeles County residents. Barbara Ferrer is the Director for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Muntu Davis, MD, MPH is the Los Angele ...

. She has been highly visible in

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is th ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

Early life and education

Ferrer was born in

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

and came to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

when she was 17 in order to attend a college in

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

, later dropping out after a year. After graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in community studies from the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge ...

, Ferrer went on to earn a

Master of Public Health The Master of Public Health or Master of Philosophy in Public Health (M.P.H.), Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH), Master of Medical Science in Public Health (MMSPH) and the Doctor of Public Health (Dr.P.H.), International Masters for Healt ...

from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original c ...

and a

Master of Education The Master of Education (MEd or M.Ed. or Ed.M.; Latin ''Magister Educationis'' or ''Educationis Magister'') is a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. This degree in education often includes the following majors: curriculum ...

from the

University of Massachusetts, Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Massac ...

. Ferrer earned her

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

in social welfare from

Heller School for Social Policy and Management The Heller School for Social Policy and Management is one of the four graduate schools of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked as one of the top ten schools of social policy and one of the top 50 graduate schoo ...

Brandeis University Brandeis University is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational institution sponsored by the Jews, Jewish community, Brandeis was established on t ...

in 1994.

Career

Ferrer began with leadership roles in public health with five years at the

Massachusetts Department of Public Health The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is a governmental agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with various responsibilities related to public health within that state. It is headquartered in Boston and headed by Commissioner Monica B ...

, where she was director of Health Promotion & Chronic Disease Prevention and later director of the Division of Maternal & Child Health. She also served as the executive director of the

Boston Public Health Commission The Boston Public Health Commission, the oldest health department in the United States, is an independent public agency providing a wide range of health services and programs. It is governed by a seven-member board of health appointed by the Mayor ...

(2007-2014) and the chief strategy officer for the

W.K. Kellogg Foundation The W. K. Kellogg Foundation was founded in June 1930 as the W. K. Kellogg Child Welfare Foundation by breakfast cereal pioneer Will Keith Kellogg. In 1934, Kellogg donated more than $66 million in Kellogg Company stock and other investments to ...

. In January 2017, Ferrer was appointed to the

to replace interim director Cynthia Harding after previous director

Jonathan Fielding Jonathan Evan Fielding (born 1942) is a board-certified physician in both Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine, and the former director and health officer of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. At UCLA, he is a Distinguished Pro ...

retired in 2014. As director of L.A. County Department of Public Health, Ferrer has been prominent during the

COVID-19 pandemic response

In March 2020, Ferrer responded to the

COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles Ten of the first twenty confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States occurred in California, the first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. All of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China, as testing wa ...

by ordering some of the most severe restrictions in the US, which resulted in countless businesses, public schools, public parks, and beaches, being shut down for several months. Ferrer also mandated the use of masks in Los Angeles County. She faced criticism for her response, with 233,000 residents testing positive and 5,500 dead by August 2020, with the number of deaths rising up to 24,000 by June 2021. In July 2022, Ferrer gave public statements in making the case for a new mask mandate, which she was expected to announce on July 29. However several cities in LA County including Beverly Hills announced they would refuse to enforce her new mandate. In addition, the Alliance of Los Angeles County Parents filed a lawsuit against Ferrer and the L.A. Public Health Department, alleging their decisions had been “arbitrary, capricious and entirely lacking in evidentiary support,” and that the rights of children to the equal protection of the law were being violated. On July 28, she announced there would not be a new mandate, claiming her reversal was due to lowered COVID-19 transmission rates.

Personal life

Ferrer resides in

. She is married, and has two children and two grandchildren.

References

Boston University School of Public Health alumni Heller School for Social Policy and Management alumni University of Massachusetts Boston alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American health officials {{US-med-bio-stub