science

Rachel Levine

Rachel Levine is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Rachel Levine rather than just read about it. In short: Rachel Leland Levine ( lə-VEEN; born October 28, 1957) is an American pediatrician who served as the United States assistant secretary for health, the admiral in charge of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, from 2021 until 2025. Levine is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, and previously served as the Pennsylvania physician general from 2015 to 20…

Key takeaways

Rachel Levine belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Rachel Levine to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Rachel Levine from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rachel Leland Levine ( lə-VEEN; born October 28, 1957) is an American pediatrician who served as the United States assistant secretary for health, the admiral in charge of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, from 2021 until 2025. Levine is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, and previously served as the Pennsylvania physician general from 2015 to 2017 and as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health from 2017 to 2021. Levine is one of only a few openly transgender government officials in the United States, and is the first to hold an office that requires Senate confirmation. On October 19, 2021, Levine became the first openly transgender four-star officer in the nation's eight uniformed services. Levine was named as one of USA Today's women of the year in 2022, which recognizes women who have made a significant impact on society.

Early life and education Born on October 28, 1957, Levine is originally from Wakefield, Massachusetts. Her parents, Melvin and Lillian Levine, were both lawyers. Her sister, Bonnie Levine, is four years older. Levine is Jewish and grew up attending Hebrew school. Levine earned a high school diploma from Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Massachusetts. Levine graduated from Harvard College and the Tulane University School of Medicine, completing a residency in pediatrics and a postdoctoral fellowship in adolescent medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, New York.

Career After completing her training in pediatrics and psychiatry at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital, Levine moved from Manhattan to central Pennsylvania in 1993, where she joined the faculty of the Penn State College of Medicine and the staff at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. During her tenure, she created Penn State Hershey Medical Center's Division of Adolescent Medicine and the Penn State Hershey Eating Disorders Program.

Pennsylvania Department of Health In 2015, Levine was nominated by Pennsylvania governor-elect Tom Wolf to serve as Physician General for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. In one of her most lauded actions as physician general, Levine signed an order allowing law enforcement officers to carry naloxone. A 2016 statewide audit of Pennsylvania nursing homes found "outdated regulations, dangerously low staffing requirements for nurses, and overarching issues with weak and inconsistent inspections." Three years later the Pennsylvania auditor general found little had changed. Responding to the audit and allegations that her department had failed to remedy the shortcomings, Levine said "new regulations were imminent and would fix the problems." However, more than a year later, reporters with the investigative partnership Spotlight PA found: "Not only do problems remain, but the coronavirus has likely exploited the shortcomings, fueling deadly outbreaks across the state." In July 2017, Governor Wolf appointed Levine as Secretary of Health, and she was unanimously confirmed by the Pennsylvania State Senate.

COVID-19 response

During 2020 and until January 23, 2021, Levine led the public health response on COVID-19 in Pennsylvania as the state secretary of health. She worked closely on a daily basis with the FEMA director and led a daily press briefing. Levine also came in for criticism over her handling of the pandemic, particularly in regard to nursing home patients. On March 18, 2020, Levine directed nursing homes to admit new patients, including "stable patients who have had the COVID-19 virus” despite the warnings of nursing home trade groups that such policies "could unnecessarily cost more lives." Although the stated purpose of this decision was to alleviate overcrowding in "acute care settings”, according to a team of reporters from the USA Today Network and Bucks County Courier Times, hospitals in most Pennsylvania counties were not experiencing overcrowding at the time. Spotlight PA, also noted that, under Levine, Pennsylvania had a "robust and aggressive" plan to protect nursing home residents but it "was never fully implemented". Spotlight PA also repeatedly reported on erroneous reporting of COVID deaths and other data by state officials. On May 12, 2020, WHTM reported that following the change in nursing home admissions policies, Levine had moved her own mother out of a nursing home. Levine defended the move: " 'My mother requested, and my sister and I as her children complied to move her to another location during the Covid-19 outbreak,' Levine said. 'My mother is 95 years old. She is very intelligent and more than competent to make her own decisions.' " By the summer of 2020, around 70% of COVID deaths in Pennsylvania were in nursing homes, leading to renewed criticism that state officials were "letting infected patients back into nursing homes" and also that the state had stopped health inspections nursing homes. The issue of Levine's mother and the high COVID death toll in Pennsylvania nursing homes would momentarily be highlighted nationally after President Biden nominated Levine for the post of US Assistant Secretary for Health. As Newsweek reported, "The criticism ... has come from a few Republican leaders ..." Newsweek also fact-checked the claim that Levine put COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, concluding the claim was false and "There is no evidence to support [Representative Marjorie Taylor] Greene's claim that Levine placed coronavirus-positive patients in nursing home facilities, thus likely contributing 'to the thousands of elderly deaths in Pennsylvania.' " Questions about missing nursing home COVID death and case data would also come up again during Levine's confirmation hearings. In 2021, Pennsylvania nursing home trade groups indicated they were unaware of any nursing home in the state that was forced to involuntarily accept a COVID-positive patient or that Levine's March 18, 2020, order had led to any deaths or disease outbreaks. In July 2021 the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced it would not be investigating "whether Pennsylvania violated federal law by ordering nursing homes to accept residents who had been treated for COVID-19 in a hospital." Eleven months earlier, the DoJ had informed the governors of Pennsylvania and three other states it was seeking information to determine whether such orders "may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents."

Biden administration

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Rachel Levine

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Rachel Levine claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Rachel Levine before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Rachel Levine ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Rachel Levine

In research: Rachel Levine appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Rachel Levine in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Rachel Levine is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1957 births, 20th-century American medical doctors, 21st-century American LGBTQ people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Rachel Levine outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Rachel Levine in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Rachel Levine means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Rachel Levine out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rachel Levine in simple terms?

Why does Rachel Levine matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Rachel Levine?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Rachel Levine.