Dr. Ayanna Bennett has been tapped to lead DC Health, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office announced Thursday. She will replace Dr. Sharon Lewis, a DC Health veteran who had been leading the agency in an interim capacity following the departure of Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt last July.

Bennett comes to the District from San Francisco, where she served as the Chief Health Equity Officer and led the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Office of Health Equity. She originally joined the San Francisco city government in 2016 as the city’s first-ever Director of Inderdivisional Initiatives, a role that involved working across city agencies to coordinate research, community engagement, and healthcare delivery.

Bennett will be inheriting a full plate when she starts on July 17, as the city continues to deal with the impacts of the COVID pandemic, monitors and responds to Mpox, and faces an increasingly deadly opioid crisis and gun violence epidemic. But first, she says she’ll be talking to community members, and public health leaders both inside and outside of DC Health.

“Public health has some similarities all across the country, but it is really in many ways a local phenomenon,” she said in an interview. “You do have to be in the community to understand what exactly is happening there… that takes some time, but I do think that is a really important first step; you can’t really make changes in a community you don’t understand.”

In her previous position, Bennett focused on long-term public health initiatives that targeted health disparities among the city’s Black residents, while also maintaining a private pediatric practice. Prior to that, she led a youth center and health clinic in Bayview, a neighborhood in San Francisco, which she opened in the early 2000s. (She left that role in 2016.) She said public health as a field has emerged from the pandemic with a renewed focus on equity, but that it’s time to implement solutions, not just continue identifying problems.

“We’re moving past the ‘being aware of the problem’ and all just admitting it exists, actually saying, ‘how do you make people who have a 10, 15 year shorter lifespan live longer?'” she said. “I think those concrete end points are what we’re here for.”

The move will be somewhat of a return for Bennett, who spent several months in D.C. during her college years, working at the U.S. Health and Human Services department.

“This was my semester away…instead of going to Europe with all my friends, I hung out in Adams Morgan.”

Her appointment comes shortly after Patrick Ashley, a senior deputy at DC Health, announced he’d be leaving the department in June after four years. Ashley — often the public face of DC Health as Nesbitt became less visible — was key to the city’s COVID and Mpox responses, answering questions from reporters and the public in person and on social media. He’ll be transitioning to D.C. Public Schools, where he’ll lead a new office on contracts and procurement, according to the Washington Post.

Beyond DC Health, Bennett’s appointment marks yet another change in Bowser’s administration after a wobbly year: most recently, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee left his role for a gig at the FBI; before that, Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development and Bowser’s right-hand-man John Falcichio resigned amid an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment; last fall, former Deputy Mayor for Public and Safety and Justice Chris Geldart resigned as he faced assault and battery charges for an altercation with a trainer in a Gold’s Gym parking lot. (He was recently replaced by Lindsey Appiah.) And in late May, Linda Harllee Harper, director of both the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement died.

Asked why she wanted the job, given the scrutiny and pressure public health officials faced during the pandemic (especially when their decisions were often at odds with other local officals) Bennett said she has problems she wants to solve, and abandoning that effort because of the climate of “this particular moment” doesn’t seem like a good approach to a public health career.

“Everyone has some part of the way the world works that they wish was different, and this is the part that I have passion around,” she said.

Bennett’s appointment will need to be confirmed by the D.C. Council.