In her six years as the first woman director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Julie Louise Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H. guided the nation’s leading public health agency through an era of rapid growth and innovative transformation.

After earning a B.A. magna cum laude in chemistry and biology and a M.D. at Case Western Reserve University, Gerberding completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she also served as Chief Medical Resident before completing her fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology and Infectious Diseases. She earned a M.P.H. degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.

The AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s placed Gerberding on the front lines of HIV care at the University of California at San Francisco, leading her to pioneer research in preventing occupational HIV transmission. She joined CDC in 1998 as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion where she led patient safety programs and national efforts to combat infections and antimicrobial resistance in healthcare settings. It was her timely and commanding response to the anthrax scare in 2001, however, that led to her appointment as CDC Director in July 2002.

Dr. Gerberding oversaw a more than $10 billion and a workforce of 15,000 people, and lead a dramatic expansion of CDC’s portfolio to encompass preparedness and response to bioterrorism, pandemics, and other emerging health threats, as well as global health programs in more than 45 countries. In addition, she led a strategic restructuring of CDC, developed new national scientific centers to conduct research in health marketing, public health informatics, and zoonotic diseases, and oversaw a $1.6 billion capital improvement program. Together with state and local public health and private sector partners, Dr. Gerberding helped launch the “Alliance to Make US Healthier,” a grass roots social movement to expand the health reform conversation to include health promotion and prevention.

Dr. Gerberding’s accomplishments as a public health innovator have earned her numerous awards and accolades. In 2005, she was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people for her leadership in modernizing the $11 billion agency as it faced unprecedented health threats like SARS and West Nile Virus infection. Forbes Magazine also listed her among the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world in 2005-8, a testament to CDC’s growing influence around the world. Dr. Gerberding also received the Surgeon General’s Medallion for actions of exceptional achievement to the cause of public health and medicine, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Public Health Service.

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