HHS Secretary Leavitt Joins The Blogosphere

A warm welcome to Secretary Mike Leavitt (blog bio) who last week launched his blog at Secretary Mike Leavitt's Blog. It is wonderful to see the United States top health care official join the blogospere and create a vehicle to share his personal observations and have an open conversation about health care and the challenges that that we all face.

I am impressed by his goal to keep the blog personal (not relying on staff or the PR department to write his posts) outlined in his About this Blog summary and introductory post. I'm hoping that he enjoys the experience and has the time to continue to blog past his initial trial phase. In my mind he gets the idea behind blogging -- a communication utility which is used to think and understand, share his observations, engage ideas and as he says, create a "dynamic online conversation." These characteristics are what makes blogging something more than just another way to create traditional media/PR web content. It's the reason why I enjoy the blogging process.

Question to readers: Is Secretary Leavitt the highest ranking U.S. official to date to have a blog which is personally written? Are there any other Federal Executive Department Secretary level bloggers?

Thanks to iHealthBeat for its article announcing Secretary Leavitt's blog.