The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services is the head of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, concerned with health matters. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet. The office was formerly Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

In 1979, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was renamed the Department of Health and Human Services, and its education functions transferred to the new Department of Education. Patricia Roberts Harris headed the department before and after it was renamed.

Nominations to the office of Secretary of HHS are referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid, before confirmation is considered by the full United States Senate.

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act the role of the Secretary has been greatly expanded.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services by the United States Senate on April 29, 2009.

The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a Cabinet department of the United States government with the goal of protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is "Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America". Before the separate federal Department of Education was created in 1979, it was called the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).

President Harding proposed a Department of Education and Welfare as early as 1923, and similar proposals were also recommended by subsequent presidents, but for various reasons were not implemented. It^{[clarification needed]} was only enacted thirty years later as part of the authority, in which the president was allowed to create or reorganize bureaucracies as long as neither house of Congress passed a legislative veto. This power to create new departments was removed after 1962, and in the early 1980s the Supreme Court declared legislative vetoes unconstitutional.

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was renamed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1979, when its education functions were transferred to the newly created United States Department of Education under the Department of Education Organization Act. HHS was left in charge of the Social Security Administration, agencies constituting the Public Health Service, and Family Support Administration.

Kathleen Sebelius (pronounced /sɨˈbiːliəs/; née Gilligan, born May 15, 1948) is an American politician currently serving as the 21st Secretary of Health and Human Services. She was the second female Governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, the Democratic respondent to the 2008 State of the Union address, and chair-emerita of the Democratic Governors Association.

Sebelius was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family in Cincinnati, Ohio. She attended the Summit Country Day School in Cincinnati and graduated from Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C. with a B.A. in political science. She later earned a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Kansas. She moved to Kansas in 1974, where she served for eight years as a representative in the Kansas Legislature and eight years as Insurance Commissioner before being elected governor.

Sebelius is the daughter of former Democratic Ohio Governor John J. Gilligan, and thus they became the first father/daughter governor pair in the United States after her election. Following passage of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, she pointed out another father-daughter connection: her father had been in the House of Representatives when Medicare was originally passed in 1965.

Tommy George Thompson (born November 19, 1941), a United States Republican politician, was the 42nd Governor of Wisconsin, after which he served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Thompson was a candidate for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, but dropped out early after a poor performance in polls. He is currently running for the United States Senate election in 2012.

Thompson was born in Elroy, Wisconsin, where his father, Allan, owned and ran a gas station and country grocery store, and his mother, Julia, was a teacher. He is a former captain in the United States Army and United States Army Reserve, and holds a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Thompson was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1966; he became the Assembly's assistant minority leader in 1973 and minority leader in 1981. He was famous for aggressively utilizing parliamentary procedure to give his minority party some limited say in the legislative process. Since this use of procedure was invariably one of delay and obstruction, he soon received the nickname "Dr. No" by the frustrated majority.^{[neutrality is disputed]}