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CWRU double alumna Julie Louise Gerberding
has been named the new director of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances
and Disease Registry. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
G. Thompson made the announcement at CDC headquarters in Atlanta
this month. 
Gerberding is the first woman to serve in
this capacity. She earned her bachelor of arts degree, magna cum
laude, in chemistry and biology and her medical degree at CWRU
in 1977 and 1981, respectively.
In being named to her new post, Gerberding
follows in the footsteps of another CWRU double graduate, David
Satcher. He earned his medical and doctorate degrees at CWRU in
1970 and was CDC director and ATSDR administrator from 1993 to
1998, the year he was named U.S. surgeon general and assistant
secretary of health. He served as surgeon general until February
2002.
Gerberding is an associate clinical professor
of medicine (infectious diseases) at Emory University, Atlanta,
and is on leave of absence as an associate professor of medicine
(infectious diseases) and epidemiology and biostatistics at the
University of California, San Francisco. At UCSF, she was director
of the Prevention Epicenter, a multidisciplinary service, teaching
and research program that focused on preventing infections in
patients and their health care providers. After medical school,
she had 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 her master of public health degree
at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990.
Gerberding joined the CDC in 1998 as director
of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, where she developed
the CDC's patient safety initiatives and other programs to prevent
infections, antimicrobial resistance and medical errors in health
care settings. As acting deputy director of the CDC's National
Center for Infectious Diseases, she played a major role in leading
CDC's response to the anthrax bioterrorism events in the fall
of 2001.
Her scientific interests encompass infection
prevention and health care quality promotion among patients and
their health care providers. She has authored or co-authored more
than 120 peer-reviewed publications and textbook chapters and
has contributed to numerous guidelines and policies relevant to
HIV prevention, post-exposure prophylaxis, management of infected
health care personnel and health care-associated infection prevention
and control.
Gerberding is a member of Phi Beta Kappa,
Alpha Omega Alpha (medical honor society, to which she was inducted
as a medical student at CWRU), the American Society for Clinical
Investigation and the American College of Physicians. She is a
fellow in the Infectious Diseases Society of America, has served
as chair and co-chair of its Committee on Professional Development
and Diversity, was elected to serve as a member of the organization's
Nominations Committee and is currently co-chair of its Annual
Program Committee.
She also is a member of the Society for
Healthcare Epidemiology of America, has served as a member of
its AIDS/Tuberculosis Committee, is currently serving her third
year as academic counselor on the organization's board and will
be president of the organization in 2003. In the past, she served
as a member of NCID/CDC Board of Scientific Counselors, the CDC
HIV Advisory Committee and the Scientific Program Committee for
the National Conference on Human Retroviruses. She also has been
a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, the American
Medical Association, the CDC, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, the National AIDS Commission, the U.S. Congress'
Office of Technology Assessment and the World Health Organization.
Gerberding's editorial activities have included
appointments to the editorial board of Annals of Internal Medicine
and service as associate editor of American Journal of Medicine
and as a peer reviewer for numerous internal medicine, infectious
diseases and epidemiology journals.
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