Governor Larry Hogan appoints Dr Howard Haft as the new Deputy Secretary of Public Health

Medstar Shah Medical Group would like to congratulate Dr. Howard Haft as he has been named as the new deputy secretary of public health at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, by Gov. Larry Hogan. Dr. Howard Haft will join the department currently being led by Secretary Van Mitchell, also a Charles County resident. “As a leader in public health and health care innovation, Maryland needs the right team in place to help people across the state lead healthier, more productive lives,” Hogan (R) said in a news release. “I am confident that Dr. Haft will be an asset to Secretary Mitchell’s team.” “DHMH welcomes Dr. Haft,” Mitchell said in the release. “In addition to his considerable accomplishments in the medical field, Dr. Haft brings a strong entrepreneurial history that has informed those medical successes. He brings to our team significant experiences in innovative health care delivery and in improved health outcomes.” Haft has 27 years of clinical experience in primary internal medicine and 10 years of hospital-based emergency medicine, clinical and leadership experience. He also worked early in his career as a consultant in internal medicine for the state of California’s Department of Mental Health; at that time, his academic affiliation was with the University of California, Davis. Among his numerous accomplishments, Haft co-founded ConMed Health in 1984 and served as its chief medical officer. ConMed is a Maryland-based provider of correctional health care services to county and municipal detention facilities in 15 states. He retired from ConMed in 2010. Haft also was founder, president and medical director of Maryland HealthCare Associates, where he established a multispecialty medical practice. He was founder and president of the Maryland Foundation for Quality Healthcare, which provided health care education to uninsured and under-insured Marylanders. Most recently, he served as chief medical officer at Health Partners, a Waldorf-based charitable clinic serving Charles County and surrounding areas. Haft joins DHMH at a time when the department is playing a key role in the Hogan administration’s multilayered effort to tackle Maryland’s heroin epidemic, the news release states. DHMH gathers data on factors that inform fatal overdoses tied to heroin and other opioids, and Mitchell leads the State’s Inter-Agency Heroin and Opioid Coordinating Council. Haft succeeds Dr. Laura Herrera Scott, who has accepted a position at Johns Hopkins HealthCare as the new medical director for population health and community health programs. She will leave DHMH at the end of the month.