Former seven-term congressman Dr. David Weldon was chosen by President-elect Donald Trump going into this past weekend to serve as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Amidst the flurry of possible appointments grabbing headlines, Dr. Weldon has the opportunity to change the way America has handled public health for decades.

STAT News wrote, “The former Florida congressman sponsored legislation that would have carved out the CDC’s vaccine safety research…” The Vaccine Safety Bill to ‘carve out research’ Dr. Weldon introduced in 2007 wanted to establish an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services to handle the nation’s vaccine safety. His reasoning at the time was that the CDC had an inherent conflict of interest being responsible for both vaccine safety and promotion—an issue unchanged to this day.