US president-elect Donald Trump has chosen celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz to run the country’s Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz, known as Dr Oz, unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in 2022.

Trump, who endorsed Oz in that race, said the heart surgeon who previously appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show would work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump said the pair would take on “the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake” as well as cutting what he called waste and fraud.

“Our broken healthcare system harms everyday Americans, and crushes our country’s budget,” Trump said, adding Oz would be a leader in “incentivising disease prevention”.

I am honored to be nominated by @realDonaldTrump to lead CMS. I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary @RobertKennedyJr. pic.twitter.com/aYIQJHG5Ej

— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) November 19, 2024

Oz reacted to his appointment with a post on X.

“I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary @RobertKennedyJr,” he wrote.

Trump’s announcement noted that Oz graduated from Harvard, and earned a joint MD and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania – and that he won nine Daytime Emmys for the Dr. Oz Show.

But he has also been criticised by medical professionals for pushing unproven medical treatments and diets. Notably, he was criticised in 2020 for promoting the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19.

Previously, the British Medical Journal had also called Oz’s medical advice into question in a 2014 study that examined recommendations he made in 40 randomly selected episodes of his show in 2013.

Researchers found a case study or other evidence that supported only 46 per cent of 80 recommendations.

Oz told NBC News in that his show’s aim was “not to talk about medicine”, while acknowledging that “there are segments that I made that I wish I could take back”.

Trump appeared on Oz’s TV show during the 2016 US presidential campaign to reveal the results of his physical examination.

Like Kennedy, Oz has no experience running a massive bureaucracy. The programs the pair will oversee run health coverage for 105 million Americans.

Trump followed up Tuesday’s announcement with another naming his transition co-chair Linda McMahon as his pick to be the next secretary of the US Department of Education.

“Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World. We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” he said.

McMahon is a major Republican donor and the billionaire co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment.

As education secretary, McMahon could potentially be tasked with overseeing the department’s demise after Trump repeatedly called for it to be abolished during the election campaign.

Her co-chair on Trump’s transition committee, Howard Lutnick, has been nominated as Trump’s secretary of commerce.

Lutnick is chief executive of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald and a cryptocurrency enthusiast.

-with AAP