Combating Microbial Terrorists: How to End Our Preparedness Stalemate

From anthrax to Zika, the new millennium has challenged us with an ongoing lineup of new and re-emerging infectious disease threats. Each outbreak prompts a reactive response, short-term resource investments, and eventual codification of "lessons learned." Unfortunately, our retrospective analyses of opportunities to improve preparedness have not translated into the meaningful long-term investments and actions necessary for success, and we remain highly vulnerable to the next threat. Dr. Gerberding will describe how health protection science, government leadership, and social mobilization must work together and address this challenge head-on if we are to ever achieve the vision of global health security.  

Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, is Executive Vice President and Chief Patient Officer, Strategic Communications, Global Public Policy, and Population Health at Merck, where she also has responsibility for the Merck for Mothers program and the Merck Foundation. As Chief Patient Officer, Dr. Gerberding leads efforts to engage with patients and patient organizations to bring their perspectives into Merck to help inform company decisions.

Dr. Gerberding served as director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for seven years, from 2002-2009. In that position she led public health initiatives in response to crises such as avian flu, natural disasters and anthrax bioterrorism. She originally joined the CDC in 1998 to lead their Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, having previously served as director of the Epidemiology and Prevention Interventions Center at San Francisco General and a tenured academic faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Dr. Gerberding attended college and medical school at Case Western Reserve University and trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and clinical pharmacology at San Francisco General Hospital and UCSF. Along the way she earned a master's degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley.