The job of guiding Kansas through a generation-defining public health crisis for nearly two years fell to Dr. Lee Norman. Until recently, and suddenly, it didn’t.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly recently fired him as secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment after months of reducing his role as the face of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
She then quickly replaced him with Janet Stanek, a longtime hospital administrator who’s worked for the past 21 years at Stormont-Vail Health in Topeka.