He serves as president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global initiative working to prevent epidemics and cardiovascular disease.

[35] Upon his appointment as Commissioner of Health, Frieden made tobacco control a priority,[36] resulting in a rapid decline[37] after a decade of no change in smoking rates.

[40] The workplace smoking ban prompted spirited debate before the New York City Council passed it and Mayor Bloomberg signed it into law.

[46] Frieden introduced the city's first comprehensive health policy, Take Care New York, which targeted ten leading causes of preventable illness and death for public and personal action.

[52] Some community and civil liberties advocates fought this legislation, arguing it would undermine patients' rights and lead eventually to forced HIV testing.

[55] Frieden's perspective is now widely accepted,[56] and on February 14, 2007, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene introduced the NYC Condom,[57][58] prompting Catholic League president Bill Donohue to respond, "What's next?

[62][63] The New York City Board of Health's decision[64] to require laboratories to report A1C test results generated a heated debate among civil libertarians, who viewed it as a violation of medical privacy and an intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship.

His visits to West Africa beginning in August 2014 and a September 2014 CDC analysis projecting that the Ebola epidemic could increase exponentially to infect more than 1 million people within four months[73] prompted him to press for an international surge response.

[75] In a Congressional hearing in October 2014, Frieden was asked about his handling of the Ebola crisis after the disease had spread to two nurses from a patient in the US.

[78][79] During Frieden’s tenure as CDC director, he identified “winnable battles”: tobacco use, teen pregnancy, HIV, healthcare-associated infections, nutrition and physical activity, and motor vehicle fatalities.

[81] Frieden called antimicrobial resistance “a threat to our economic stability and to modern medicine” [82] and drew attention to the overprescription of and increase in deaths from opioids[83] and oversaw a controversial CDC on prescribing practices.

In 2017, Frieden started leading an initiative called "Resolve to Save Lives" to prevent cardiovascular disease and epidemics.

[91] These strategies include working with the World Health Organization to eliminate trans fat[92][93][94],reduce salt consumption worldwide.

[118] Frieden's op-eds on the pandemic were published in The New York Times,[119] The Wall Street Journal,[115] The Washington Post,[103] and Foreign Affairs.

[127][128]Frieden identified CDC errors during the COVID-19 pandemic and joined other former directors to support a more robust [129]and resist calls to dismantle the agency.

[130] He suggested ways forward to rebuild trust in and effectiveness of public health, including the need to improve disease tracking systems, minimize mandates, and make progress on issues that matter to communities.

[132] In April 2022, Frieden led the transition of Resolve to Save Lives to become an independent, U.S.-based not-for-profit organization after five years of rapid expansion incubated at Vital Strategies.

[137][138] Frieden has noted that cardiovascular disease kills far more people than Covid, and called for more action to reduce its three leading preventable causes: tobacco use, hypertension, and air pollution.

[150][151] His work in public health analytics has emphasized the importance of using multiple forms of evidence beyond randomized controlled trials.

Building on work by Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton and others, he has argued that although trials provide valuable evidence, other study designs may better answer some public health questions.