Julie Gerberding



Julie Louise Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H. (born August 22, 1955, Estelline, South Dakota), an infectious disease expert, is the current director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), having assumed the positions on July 3, 2002.

Dr. Gerberding has been leading CDC's efforts to prepare for and counter terrorism. Dr. Gerberding is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at Emory University and an Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Dr. Gerberding resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, David.

Education and early career
Dr. Gerberding earned a bachelor of arts magna cum laude in chemistry and biology and her MD at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Gerberding 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. In 1990, she earned an MPH degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to joining the CDC, Dr. Gerberding was a UCSF faculty member and directed the Prevention Epicenter, a multidisciplinary research, training, and clinical service program.

CDC tenure


In 1998, Dr. Gerberding joined the CDC as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion for the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), where she developed the CDC’s patient safety initiatives and other disease prevention programs. She rose to become the acting deputy director of NCID and helped lead the CDC’s response to the anthrax bioterrorism events of 2001. She now directs the CDC and is responsible for a budget approaching $7 billion.

CDC restructuring
Soon after her arrival at the CDC, Gerberding began an overhaul of the agency's organizational structure. Since the restructuring began, many of the CDC's senior scientists and leaders have either left or have announced plans to leave.

Gerberding's leadership of the CDC has been the subject of an inquiry by the United States Senate Finance Committee. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the committee, has announced that the committee is trying to determine whether the upheaval at the agency has jeopardized its scientific mission. Among several lines of inquiry, the committee is investigating the circumstances surrounding the receipt of premium bonuses by members of an inner circle of officials at the CDC, at the expense of scientists and others who perform much of the agency's scientific work. Administrators inside Gerberding's office have benefited the most. William Gimson III, the agency's chief operating officer, received bonuses totaling $147,863 between 2002 and mid-2006.

The bonuses for administrators were part of a decision by the George W. Bush administration prioritizing transformation of CDC's management. The growing share of premium bonuses for CDC administrators has meant less money is available for scientists and other workers. The increase in large cash awards has benefited employees in the CDC's financial, computer and human resources departments.

According to the Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution disgruntled former senior scientists allege the changes have undermined the agency.

Professional background
In the past, Dr. Gerberding served as a member of CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases’ Board of Scientific Counselors, the CDC HIV Advisory Committee, and the Scientific Program Committee, National Conference on Human Retroviruses. She has also been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National AIDS Commission, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the World Health Organization.

Dr. Gerberding is currently a member the American College of Physicians, the American Epidemiology Society, and is a fellow with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Dr. Gerberding also served three years on the board of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Dr. Gerberding is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Medicine and serves as a peer-reviewer for numerous internal medicine, infectious diseases, and epidemiology journals.

In 2006, Dr. Gerberding gave the commencement speech at the Harvard School of Public Health. Among other things, she discussed the usefulness of wikipedia in writing commencement speeches.