Executive Leadership & Expert Bios

Christine M. Branche, PhD

Principal Associate Director and Director, Office of Construction Safety and Health
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Christine M. Branche, PhD, is the Principal Associate Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Director of the Office of Construction Safety and Health located in the NIOSH Office of the Director, all within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Washington, DC. Dr. Branche began her career at CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service in the Division of Injury Epidemiology and Control. From 1996 to July 2007, she was the Director of the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and was responsible for managing mission of DUIP. Dr. Branche joined NIOSH in 2007 serving as the delegated federal official for the White House-appointed Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health which advises the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on guidelines for the likelihood of individual cancers, and on the scientific validity and quality of dose reconstruction activities at NIOSH. She was engaged as well in NIOSH's program evaluation conducted through the National Academies of Science. During July 2008 through August 2009, she was the Acting Director of NIOSH.

In December 2009, Dr. Branche was named as the Acting Director of NIOSH's newly established Office of Construction Safety and Health within the Office of the Director. The Office is responsible for addressing the special problems in the construction sector, and rigorously coordinating NIOSH's construction safety and health research, the NIOSH funded national construction center, university-based and other external researchers, and coordinating with the Directorate of Construction in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, part of the U.S. Department of Labor). She is also the Manager for the Construction Sector Program of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA).

Dr. Branche has done extensive work in injury prevention including drowning, water recreation, fire-related injury prevention, motor vehicle-related injury prevention and sports and recreation. Her scientific investigations include fatal and nonfatal drowning in adults and children; personal water craft, boating, spinal cord injuries related to water recreation-related; injuries related to boat and boat-propellers; and falls among adults and construction workers. She has authored several scientific publications, including many which uncover new problems in injury control. Dr. Branche has provided technical consultation to many U.S. and international organizations including the American Red Cross, the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Football League, and the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization.

Dr. Branche received her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester in New York, and her M.S.P.H. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During her coursework at UNC, she was a National Science Foundation Fellow. While completing her Ph.D., she worked as an Epidemiology Research Associate at Burroughs Wellcome Company (now Glaxo Smith Kline), where she gained expertise in pharmaco-epidemiology. At CDC, Dr. Branche has received numerous awards for her research and leadership.

Dr. Branche is a Public Health Leadership Institute scholar. She serves on the Fire Council of Underwriters Laboratory, and previously served on the advisory boards for the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, the International Association of Firefighters, and CPWR—The Center for Construction Research and Training.