New directors for CDC, NIOSH bring EH touch
Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, a specialist in infectious diseases who helped lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) response to anthrax, became the agency’s first female director in July.
Employee health professionals are looking forward to CDC leadership from someone with experience working with health care workers in a hospital setting. Gerberding developed post-exposure prophylaxis for health care workers at San Francisco General Hospital. At the University of California-San Francisco, she was director of the Prevention Epicenter, a program for preventing infections in patients and health care workers. In 1998, she joined CDC as director of the Divi-sion of Healthcare Quality Promotion. Last fall, Gerberding became prominent in the effort to contain and address the anthrax threat. She most recently served as acting principal deputy director of CDC, helping lead the agency after the resignation of former director Jeffrey Koplan. She also has served as acting deputy director of CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases.
"She’s been a very clinically oriented person. . . . That’s very important," says Geoff Kelafant, MD, MSPH, FACOEM, medical director of the occupational health department at the Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Mattoon, IL, and chairman of the medical center occupational health section of the American College of Occupational and Environ-mental Medicine in Arlington Heights, IL. "I think it will be very helpful when we have an issue that comes up, that she will be able to understand the clinical [arena] and some of the issues that affect health care workers."
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health also has a new director: John Howard, MD, MPH, JD, LLM, former chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health for California’s Department of Industrial Relations. He also was assistant professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the University of California at Irvine. Howard is a board-certified occupational health physician and has written extensively on occupational health law and policy.
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