May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Thomas R. Frieden, who banned smoking in bars and restaurants as New York City’s health commissioner, was named director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. public health agency.

Frieden, a 48-year-old specialist in infectious diseases, will take over at the CDC in June, said Glen Nowak, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based agency, in a telephone interview today. In New York, Frieden banned trans-fats in restaurants, distributed millions of free condoms and started electronic record-keeping of blood-sugar levels for diabetes patients.

Frieden has been New York City’s commissioner of health and mental hygiene since January 2002. He will take over the agency that has been in the forefront of combating the global outbreak of swine flu, or H1N1. The CDC recommends vaccines for children and advises the public on health threats such as obesity, terrorism and natural disasters.

“He has really led a transformation of thinking about how to improve the health of the whole city,” said Linda Fried, dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York, in a telephone interview. “He has demonstrated that radical changes that will really make a huge difference in peoples’ health can be accepted even though no one ever dreamed of them before.”

Frieden is the second person chosen by President Barack Obama for a top U.S. health post after holding the New York City job. Margaret A. Hamburg, commissioner from 1991 to 1997, was picked in March to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

Serving New Yorkers

Frieden will replace Richard E. Besser, the acting head of the CDC. Besser has led near-daily media briefings and made regular television appearances on swine flu since the first outbreak was reported three weeks ago.

In New York, Frieden managed an annual budget of $1.7 billion and a staff of more than 6,000, according to the city’s Web site. The CDC’s annual budget is about $9 billion, according to the agency’s Web site. More than 14,000 people work for the CDC and the related Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, also in Atlanta.

By raising taxes on cigarettes and banning smoking in restaurants and bars, New York helped 350,000 smokers quit since 2002, according to the CDC. The city was also the first in the U.S. to require restaurants to put nutritional information on menus and to eliminate their use of trans-fats, found in vegetable shortenings and margarines and linked to high cholesterol.

Those efforts have made Frieden the target of criticism from the tobacco industry and the Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group representing restaurants and food companies.

‘Overzealous Activist’

“Frieden doesn’t simply blur the line between what is the government’s responsibility in regulating health and what is the individual’s responsibility; he barely recognizes its existence,” said Justin Wilson, the Center’s senior research analyst, in a statement. Wilson said Frieden is an “overzealous activist who doesn’t give any consideration to the importance of personal responsibility or privacy.”

Before Frieden’s time as New York’s health commissioner, he worked at the CDC for 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, the CDC said. In that role, he investigated the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Besser will continue as head of the CDC’s Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response, a position he held for four years before becoming acting head of the agency, Obama said in a statement today.

“Those preparations were essential during the recent H1N1 flu detection and response activities,” Obama said. “We are very pleased he will continue in that role.”

Scientific Training

Frieden received a medical degree and a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and completed training in infectious diseases at Yale University, according to a statement from the White House. He has written more than 200 scientific articles.

“This is a tremendously exciting time for public health,” Besser said today in a statement. “Frieden is one of the nation’s leading public health experts and a consummate innovator. He’s had dramatic success in New York City using policy approaches to reduce smoking and tobacco use and to help reduce and eliminate trans-fats in restaurant meals.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.netTom Randall in New York at trandall6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 15, 2009 11:21 EDT