Eisenhower creates Department of Health, Education and Welfare via Reorganization Plan No. 1

President Dwight Eisenhower's Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953 took effect on April 11, 1953, abolishing the Federal Security Agency and establishing the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) as a full Cabinet-level department — the first new Cabinet department since Labor in 1913. Oveta Culp Hobby, a Texas newspaper publisher and former Women's Army Corps commander, was sworn in as the first HEW Secretary on the same day. The reorganization gave federal health, education, and social security programs their first unified Cabinet home and set the institutional foundation that would become HHS in 1980.