Wilson Picks Activist Doctor for Health Post : Government: Molly Joel Coye has pursued issues of worker safety, chemical hazards and care for low-income and uninsured patients.

Gov. Pete Wilson announced Monday that he has picked Dr. Molly Joel Coye, a 1960s political activist, to become director of the Department of Health Services, the state’s chief public health office.

Coye replaces another medical doctor, Kenneth W. Kizer, who will step down later this month to work in the private sector after more than six years in a job that often is the center of controversy.

Wilson described the 43-year-old Coye as “widely respected for her knowledge of health issues ranging from AIDS to occupational health and safety. Her experience and vision make her uniquely qualified to address the diverse and changing health requirements of all Californians.”

Wilson pointed to a long list of Coye’s accomplishments in the field of public health. From 1986 through 1990, she served as commissioner of public health for New Jersey--a position similar to the one she will occupy in California.

Coye’s expertise has been in the areas of occupational health, chemical hazards and pesticides.

But her appointment comes at a time when Wilson has proposed shifting several duties of the Department of Health Services to a new California Environmental Protection Agency. Among the responsibilities to be shifted to Cal-EPA are the cleanup of toxic wastes and assessment of the risks of hazardous chemicals.

While health commissioner in New Jersey, Coye was instrumental in setting up a program called HealthStart to improve delivery of health care to low-income pregnant women and infants.

Since assuming office in January, Wilson repeatedly has committed himself to preventive health care programs. His proposed state budget calls for added funds for prenatal care--spending that supporters believe can reduce infant death and disability.

In a telephone interview, Coye said she believes the governor “is clearly oriented to and serious about investment in prevention. . . . New approaches fostered in a state with the size and cultural diversity of California are going to be very influential I think in other states and on the federal level.”

Outgoing health chief Kizer, who has known Coye for more than a decade, said he is very pleased with the choice.

“You always like to pass the baton to someone you feel good about and I feel good about Molly’s coming here,” Kizer said.

Coye was a China scholar before becoming a physician, writing two books on the subject before she entered Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. While in Hong Kong studying China, she led an demonstration against the Vietnam War at the American consulate. After the demonstration, U.S. officials urged her to leave the British colony.

In a 1980 interview with The Times, she said she switched to medicine because of her politics.

“I came to medical school with the purpose of doing political work in the health field,” she told a reporter.

At Hopkins she was one of a handful of students on the picket lines when hospital workers were on strike.

On Tuesday, Coye said Wilson knew about her activist past, which included trips to Castro’s Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua to study health delivery in those countries. “It speaks strongly about the governor that he looks to people with the strongest professional credentials and a real track record,” she said.

After medical school, she began specializing in occupational health and problems of the workplace, setting up a clinic for work-related health problems at San Francisco General Hospital.

Her training led to a job as a medical investigator for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, where she studied such worker health issues as the effects of video display terminals on pregnant woman. (Her study found no clear-cut relationship between working on computer terminals and miscarriages.)

While health commissioner in New Jersey, under Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean, Coye faced an AIDS epidemic and problems of a growing segment of the population not covered by health insurance.

In an interview she gave when leaving public office in New Jersey to assume a professorship at Johns Hopkins, Coye expressed satisfaction at having set up a system for paying hospitals to care for the uninsured and for dealing with a severe statewide shortage of nurses.

Coye will earn $99,805 annually in the state post.