Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor

Convert the Principal Deputy ASH into a three-star Deputy Surgeon General

Not started

490 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“The position previously known as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health should be combined with and have the title of Deputy Surgeon General and become a three-star position with operational control including financial and deployment decisions.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No allowlisted record shows the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health retitled Deputy Surgeon General, given three-star rank, or given operational control of financial and deployment decisions. Cluster negative search D (Office of Global Affairs and HHS internal management) in the Chapter 14 log covers this item. **Confirmed on 2026-09-03 from two of the agency's own pages.** OASH's leadership page still names the post by its existing title — "Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health … Stephanie E. Haridopolos, MD, DABFM", under Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brian Christine — and the OASH organizational chart carries a box headed "Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health". The title has not been changed to Deputy Surgeon General and no three-star rank is stated anywhere. HHS's own leadership index lists "Vacant — U.S. Surgeon General", so there is at present no Surgeon General for a deputy to serve under. The one adjacent fact, recorded so the next pass does not mistake it for the ask: the Principal Deputy is now **dual-hatted into the Office of the Surgeon General** as Director of National Health Communications — a move toward OSG, but not the retitling, the rank or the operational control the Quote asks for. **No citation is written for this**: the OASH pages on health.gov carry no last-reviewed date of their own (the parent page's stamp, November 2, 2021, is plainly stale for content naming 2025 appointees), and HHS's leadership index is stamped February 21, 2025, also stale relative to its content. Both are read-but-undatable sources under §5; the negative is bounded and does not need a citation to stand.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • No HHS Statement of Organization published in the window touches the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health; the four in-window HHS Statements cover OGC, OCIO, OCR and FDA.
  • Federal Register full text “Deputy Surgeon General” and “Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health” since 2025-01-20 return nothing on point.
  • hhs.gov/ash only looked closed because it redirects. It resolves to health.gov, where OASH’s leadership page and organizational chart both open. Read 2026-09-03.
  • Regulatory agenda, checked 2026-09-01. Checked against the full HHS agenda on reginfo.gov (183 active RINs in the 2026 Unified Agenda, published 2026-08-14), not the abbreviated version the Federal Register prints. The nearest entry is recorded here; it does not name this ask’s object, so the Status is unchanged — an agenda entry that states a general goal in the ask’s subject area does not move the Status.
    • 0937-AA14 (US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Officers: Updates to Appointment Standards, NPRM 07/2026) is the agenda’s only Commissioned Corps rulemaking: it updates the education and training standards at 42 CFR part 21, last revised in 1969, and creates no Deputy Surgeon General post, no three-star rank and no operational control of financial or deployment decisions. “Surgeon General” otherwise appears once in the 183, in IHS’s 0917-AA14 removing an obsolete rate-approval reference.
Action
other
Object
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health position
ID
1369