AP/Chicago Sun-Times Profiles CDC Director Gerberding

The AP/Chicago Sun-Times on June 29 profiled CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding, who has "restored the credibility" of the agency "while becoming perhaps the most visible U.S. health official" since former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. The CDC a year ago was "seen as a slow-to-react agency better at compiling statistics than fighting disease," but according to the AP/Sun-Times, "that has changed with the agency's fast, up-front response" to the outbreaks of West Nile virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and monkeypox, with Gerberding "fielding the on-camera questions." No CDC director has "weathered as many crises as Gerberding has in her first year," and Gerberding has moved "into the spotlight as an even-keeled, knowledgeable health chief" who seeks to "inform the public while addressing people's fears," the AP/Sun-Times reports. Gerberding, who served as the director of an infection control program at the University of California-San Francisco before she joined the CDC in 1998, "comes across well" because she "relays scientific facts in an understandable way and admits it when the agency does not have the answer," the AP/Sun-Times reports. In addition, Gerberding has said she hopes that the CDC will become "more adaptable and flexible to outbreaks" in the future and that agency research grants "will one day carry the same prestige as NIH projects," the AP/Sun-Times reports (Yee, AP/Chicago Sun-Times, 6/29).