James O. Mason, M.D., DrPH
Reagan Administration, 1983-1989
Jim Mason is a former head of the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He currently is a health consultant. From 1994 until 1999 he oversaw the religious and humanitarian activities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout sub-Saharan Africa. He served as Vice President for Planning and Development and Professor, Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences during 1993. He served from 1989 until 1993 as Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services; being nominated to that position by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate. He also served as the United States delegate to the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1990 until 1993.
He served from 1983 until 1989 as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Mason served as the executive director of the Utah Department of Health with responsibilities for public health and health care financing from 1979 until 1983. He was associate professor and chair of the Division of Community Medicine in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Utah College of Medicine from 1978 until 1979. He directed the multiple hospital health care corporation owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1970 until 1975. These hospitals were spun off from the Church to become Intermountain Health Care.
He was born in 1930 in Salt Lake City, Utah and received B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Utah in 1954 and 1958. He received M.P.H. and DrPH degrees from Harvard University in 1963 and 1967. He served an internship in medicine (Osler Service) at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and was a resident in Internal Medicine at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Harvard Medical Service in Boston. He is certified in General Preventive Medicine by the American Board of Preventive Medicine.
He is married to the former Marie Smith and they are the parents of seven children and twenty-three grandchildren.
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