As physicians, we call on the U.S. Senate to immediately confirm Xavier Becerra as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, HHS plays a vital, central and singular role in our national response: to develop, implement and coordinate our nation’s response to a global pandemic that has killed more than half-a-million Americans and sickened 29 million more. A confirmed secretary at the helm of HHS ensures that this essential agency can provide the resources physicians, health professionals, hospitals, clinics and whole communities need to protect people, prevent sickness and begin the work of returning to normal.

We support Mr. Becerra’s nomination on the strength of his proven leadership abilities and his commitment to ensuring Americans have the protection of health care.

As a congressman and as attorney general for our nation’s largest and most populous state, Mr. Becerra has a demonstrated record of standing up for Americans’ health care. He played significant roles in expanding healthcare to Americans, especially to under-served and under-represented populations who have been disproportionately harmed because they lacked access to care. As a congressman, he helped reduce the rate of uninsured people in his predominantly Latino/Hispanic community by half. He helped more children, more older Americans and more low-income families get access to affordable care. As California’s attorney general, Mr. Becerra took on the opioid epidemic and held drug companies accountable for price gouging. He took on medical fraud and fought to improve patient safety.

Mr. Becerra has done this work transparently and, in a time of hyperpartisanship, much of it in bipartisan fashion.

As physicians, we want an end to the pain and suffering the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted on our fellow Americans. We can do so with a robust, coordinated response that builds trust in our communities through rigorous outreach, accelerates vaccinations with enough supplies, prevents outbreaks through testing and tracing, and restores resources to our public health infrastructure so we can better protect our families’ wellbeing and empower them to enjoy their lives to the fullest.

A Health and Human Services Department with strong, principled leadership can help us eradicate COVID-19, while meaningfully addressing the chronic, underlying conditions that contribute to higher rates of severe illness, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. Eradicating COVID-19 means also confronting diseases such as diabetes and heart illnesses that can be managed and, in many cases, eliminated with the right policies, expanded access and targeted interventions.

In short, we can build a stronger, safer America, by helping communities navigate the world’s worst pandemic in more than 100 years, while improving access and health outcomes well beyond COVID-19.

This work must begin now, and it must start by confirming Mr. Becerra as our nation’s 25th Health and Human Services secretary without delay.