Leadership

Laboratory Science, Policy and Practice Program Office

Linda Carnes, DrPA
Associate Director for Communication

Dr. Carnes is a public policy, health communications and marketing specialist with 25 years of management experience in the areas of public affairs, private sector partnerships, media and global health. Presently, she is the Associate Director for Communications in the Laboratory Science, Policy and Practice Program Office (OSELS). Most recently, she served as the Energizing People Lane Leader to the CDC Healthiest Nation Coordinating Council, charged to create excitement and relevance about health care reform among the public and employees. Prior to this, she served as Senior Advisor for Public Relations in for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC/OADC), where she led a team of public affairs and media professionals in the development and implementation of innovative initiatives that engage the public in health and manage the brand and image of the agency. In previous CDC positions, she directed professional teams in marketing consultations and led the design, development and implementation of initiatives to promote behavior change utilizing the media and popular emerging technologies. Prior to this, she developed interventions and negotiated agreements to build professional competencies and stronger public health infrastructures with ministries of health in Argentina, China and Brazil. Dr. Carnes is also a journalist and public affairs producer, and worked at CBS, Inc. and Public Broadcasting stations in New York, Los Angeles, and Connecticut for 15 years before coming to CDC.

In the Spring of 1996, she served as the senior policy advisor to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy leading development of the National Implementation Plan for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Management, the administration’s cross-cutting national strategy. She has policy management and applied communications experience in the areas of HIV/AIDS prevention and environmental health at the CDC. Much of this work has focused on the design, dissemination, and evaluation of risk management and prevention messages tailored for diverse audiences; that is, messages targeted not only to diverse audiences relative to culture and ethnicity, but also relative to differences in social demographics, education, primary language, and locale. She has provided technical advice on international planning and evaluation strategies to the Control of Diarrhoea Disease Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO). This advice was in connection with the design and implementation of a 122-nation behavior modification campaign targeting mothers. Dr. Carnes also served for over 2 years as a technical operations manager for reproductive health management and family planning with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in New Delhi, India. She was engaged in rapid establishment of disease surveillance, prevention, and management systems in cooperation with participating non-government agencies (NGOs), the Indian Ministry of Health (MOH), and WHO. Presently she serves on the Aspen Institute Health Stewardship Advisory Board, the Advisory Board of the Trust for Public Land (Atlanta), the Board of Trustees for the Atlanta Speech School, and as an advisor to The Medici Center Academy of Health and Sciences. Earlier, Dr. Carnes served as a member of the Media Organizing Committee for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. She trained as a U.S. State Department Foreign Service Intern at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, was appointed Ford Foundation Fellow for the term of her masters degree program, and holds a doctorate in public policy and economics from the Von Kleinschmidt Center at the University of Southern California.