Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH., Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
In keeping with the conference theme of Celebrating Healthy Communities, Julie Louise Gerberding will keynote the first day of the conference with a presentation titled, “Healthy Communities: An Investment in Our Future.” As director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Gerberding heads the nation’s leading health protection agency. Dr. Gerberding also is the administrator for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. She joined CDC in 1998 as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, where she developed patient safety initiatives and other programs to prevent infections, anti-microbial resistance, and medical errors in health care settings. Dr. Gerberding is an associate clinical professor of medicine at Emory University and an associate professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
Julie Gerberding became the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) on July 3, 2002. Before becoming CDC director and ATSDR administrator, she was acting deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), where she played a major role in leading CDC's response to the anthrax bioterrorism events of 2001. She joined CDC in 1998 as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, NCID, where she developed CDC's patient safety initiatives and other programs to prevent infections, antimicrobial resistance, and medical errors in healthcare settings. Prior to coming to CDC, she was a University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) faculty member and directed the Prevention Epicenter, a multidisciplinary research, training, and clinical service program that focused on preventing infections in patients and their healthcare providers. Dr. Gerberding is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at Emory University and an Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at UCSF. She earned a BA magna cum laude in chemistry and biology and an MD at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She then completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at UCSF, where she also served as chief medical resident before completing her fellowship in clinical pharmacology and infectious diseases at UCSF. She earned an MPH degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.