Executive Leadership & Expert Bios

Jordan W. Tappero, MD, MPH

Director, Health Systems Reconstruction Office, Center for Global Health

Jordan W. Tappero, MD, MPH is currently serving as Director for the Health Systems Reconstruction Office in the Center for Global Health, an office opened in response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. From August through December 2009, Dr. Tappero was detailed to the Departmentt. of Health and Human Services to serve as the CDC Liaison to the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response for the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Response.

Prior to these details, Dr. Tappero has served as Acting Deputy Director for CDC's Global AIDS Program (GAP), a component of President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), where he assisted the GAP Director in managing CDC's $1.7 billion dollar annual international HIV/AIDS program. Before returning to GAP headquarters in Atlanta in the summer of 2008, Dr. Tappero served as CDC/Uganda's Director from August 2006 through July 2008. CDC/Uganda has two components – GAP and the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI). Prior to his appointment in Uganda, Dr. Tappero served from October 2000 through July 2006 as Director for CDC/Thailand, a program with three components: GAP, HIV/AIDS Research, and Global Disease Detection. While in Thailand, he also served as the HHS and State Dept. Health Attaché for the US Embassy – Bangkok. From June 1998 - September 2000, Dr. Tappero served as the Epidemiology Section Chief for the Meningitis and Special Pathogens Branch (MSPB), DBMD, NCID, focusing on the prevention of meningococcal disease and other forms of bacterial meningitis, zoonotic bacterial infections, and bioterrorism preparedness against anthrax and brucellosis. From July 1995 - May 1998, Dr. Tappero was CDC's first medical epidemiologist assigned by CDC to Botswana, where he conducted field research on HIV-associated tuberculosis (TB).

Dr. Tappero joined CDC in July 1992 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer with the MSPB/Respiratory Diseases Branch, and in June 1995, he completed CDC's Preventive Medicine Residency with NCID, OD, while assigned to State Department of Health in California.

Dr. Tappero is a Captain in the USPHS, has three American Board Certifications in Internal Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Dermatology, and he earned a Masters Degree in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.

Dr. Tappero has worked extensively for HHS across four continents (North and South America, Africa and Asia), and has authored or co-authored 180 peer-reviewed publications, as well as textbook chapters on HIV, TB, malaria, meningococcal disease, leptospirosis, Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and other emerging infections.

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