1. United States
2. S.C.
3. Letter

Support Simmer! He has the full backing of Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who supported him when Simmer was hired to run what back then was the state’s combined health and environmental agency in 2021. The Senate approved the recommendation on a 40-1 vote. Simmer said he regrets that all the COVID talk has overshadowed remarkable gains in public health in his historically unhealthy Deep South state. South Carolina now ranks around 37th or 38th in many rankings of overall health after decades in the bottom 10 if not the bottom five. Simmer has plans to get even better. The state is near the bottom in infant and mother deaths. The Public Health Department is working on a mobile maternity care center that will hit the road in 2026 and go to the state's poorest counties, where the nearest obstetrician can be more than a 50-mile (80-kilometer) drive. He is trying to combat preventable causes of early death like stroke and chronic diseases like diabetes. Just a short distance from South Carolina's Statehouse is a ZIP code with one of the highest levels of diabetic amputations in the country.