Rochelle Walensky to Direct CDC

The Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI)’s partner organization, the Center for Health Decision Science (CHDS) is proud to announce that its Affiliated Faculty Rochelle Walensky has been appointed to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the incoming Biden-Harris administration. Walensky is a decision scientist and infectious disease specialist, practicing physician and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on model-based analyses of the cost-effectiveness of infectious disease response, particularly in HIV/AIDS testing, care, and prevention. She serves as chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council in the National Institutes of Health. She has been instrumental in informing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year.

Walensky has been an integral part of the decision science community at Harvard, spanning nearly 20 years. She earned her MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2001, during which she excelled in the RDS series of decision science courses. She serves as a core member of the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) team, led by Kenneth Freedberg, a long-standing and internationally renowned research group applying decision analytic methods to HIV. She went on to become an independent scholar and is recognized as one of the leading contributors to HIV prevention and treatment policy, locally and globally. In the context of CEPAC, Walensky has collaborated with GHELI Faculty Director Sue J. Goldie in her early years, partnering in research on scaling up antiretroviral therapy in South Africa, cost-effectiveness of HIV treatment in resource-poor settings, treatment for primary HIV infection, and more. Walensky’s seminal work has been significant in health policy, and her expertise in the field will have a lasting impact for years to come.