Wen has served as a public health communicator during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2022 mpox outbreak, appearing frequently on CNN as a medical analyst.

[4] Wen serves as a public health professor at George Washington University and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

[10] Wen's mother, who died of breast cancer in 2010, first worked as a hotel room cleaner and video store clerk before becoming an elementary school teacher.

[13][11] Wen married South Africa native Sebastian Neil Walker in Boston in February 2012, after a blessing ceremony in Cape Town in November 2011.

[9][29][30][31][32] In March 2018, on behalf of Wen and the Baltimore City Health Department, the City of Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting teen pregnancy prevention funds, which resulted in a federal judge ordering the Trump administration to restore $5 million in grant funding to two Baltimore-based teen pregnancy prevention programs.

She led a group of state and city health officials to petition the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on adding black box warnings to opioids and benzodiazepines.

[35][36] In March 2016, she was invited by the White House to join President Barack Obama and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta on a panel discussion, where she spoke about Baltimore's response.

[39][40] Congressman Elijah Cummings cited Wen's efforts to combat the opioid epidemic in Baltimore and sought her help in creating national legislation to change how the United States fights it.

[45] In an interview with Elle magazine, Wen described her excitement to be at the helm of the organization where both she and her mother had received significant medical care many years prior.

[46] Wen envisioned a new direction for discourse surrounding Planned Parenthood, endeavoring to frame abortion access as an issue of healthcare rather than politics.

"[46] Wen's appointment and proposed strategic plan received mixed reviews, with commentators on both sides of the political spectrum both praising her novel approach and criticizing it as "backing away from the fight [for abortion access].

"[45] Wen's tenure at Planned Parenthood saw many major events with implications for reproductive healthcare, starting with the confirmation hearings and appointment to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh, and ending with the implementation of the nationwide Title X gag rule under the Trump-Pence administration.

[53][52] On July 19, 2019, Wen published an opinion editorial in The New York Times which set forth the circumstances underlying her departure from Planned Parenthood.

Her role as a columnist became formalized in 2020, and she began anchoring a weekly newsletter on public health and healthcare called The Checkup with Dr.

[1][2][3] In 2013, St. Martin's Press published her book, When Doctors Don't Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests with coauthor Joshua Kosowsky.

[72][73][74][75][76] A Texas man pleaded guilty to threatening her due to her advocacy for COVID-19 vaccines and was sentenced in federal court to six months in prison.

[76] The petition claimed that Wen "has promoted unscientific, unsafe, ableist, fatphobic, and unethical practices during the COVID-19 pandemic", citing her comment regarding treating COVID as endemic for example.

[76] The petition caused a heated response from all perspectives, and eventually resulted in Wen decided not to attend APHA out of safety concerns.

[78] Wen published an opinion piece in The Washington Post on November 12, 2024, suggesting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s stance against water fluoridation does not warrant the backlash it has garnered.