The elected mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, announced the appointment of Dr. Helen Arteaga Landaverde, born in Ecuador and who until now directed the Elmhurst public hospital, in the New York borough of Queens, as the new vice mayor of Health and Human Services.
Arteaga will assume the coordination of several municipal agencies such as the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Social Services, the Department for the Elderly, the Department of Services for Veterans, Youth and Children, the public system Health + Hospitals and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Mamdani’s office reported this Tuesday in a statement.
According to the note, its mission will be “to expand access to health care and social services in a city marked by the housing crisis, the increase in mental health problems and inequality in access to health care.”
Born in Ecuador and raised in the Queens neighborhood after emigrating with her family to New York, Arteaga developed her career in the NYC public health system. In 2021, she became the first Latina to direct Elmhurst Hospital, which cares for more than a million patients a year and was one of the epicenters of the covid-19 pandemic.
More appointments
Mamdani stressed in the statement that Arteaga embodies leadership “rooted in the working class” and highlighted his experience in defending essential workers in the health sector.
On the sidelines, the mayor-elect also nominated Steven Banks as the city’s new legal advisor and Ramzi Kassem as chief legal advisor.
Banks, with more than four decades of experience, was director of the Legal Aid Society and commissioner of the Department of Social Services during the administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, where he promoted the historic right to lawyer program for low-income tenants.
For his part, Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and former advisor in the White House, has been linked to the defense of civil and immigrant rights.
Experience does matter, which is why I appointed the person who spent more than 30 years at EMS. You know, the workforce that addresses at least 70% of all calls coming into FDNY? https://t.co/shTYVvvy4C
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) December 27, 2025
Mamdani takes power
The announcements come in the run-up to Zohran Mamdani’s official arrival as mayor of New York: this Wednesday, December 31, 2025, he will be sworn in at midnight in a private ceremony inside the historic Old City Hall subway station, while on January 1, 2026, he will take the oath on the steps of City Hall, marking the formal beginning of his mandate.
Present at the New Year’s event will be Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and Comptroller-elect Mark Levine, among other political figures.
New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, of Puerto Rican descent, who will be in charge of giving the opening speech on Day 1, was praised by Mamdani as the representative of “a new type of politics that puts working people at the center” and a “partner” during her campaign, from the primaries to the massive rally she gave with Sanders in October.
