Leadership

Scientific Education and Professional Development Program Office

Division of Leadership & Practice

Karen White, MPA
Director

Karen White is Deputy for CDC's State and Local Support. She is also assigned to Washington State as a Senior Management Official. After a brief tenure at the Department of Justice, Ms. White joined CDC as a Public Health Advisor. For the first 11 years of her career with CDC, Ms. White worked in State and local health departments. These assignments were in the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention and the National Immunization Program and took her to clinics and programs in Brooklyn, New York; Miami-Dade County, Florida; the State of Virginia; and New York City.

In 1990-1991, Karen had the opportunity to study for her Masters in Public Administration at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and while there focused her studies on “strategies and planning in public systems”.

After receiving her MPA from the Kennedy School, Karen was asked to join the National Immunization Program’s “Infant Immunization Initiative” at CDC in Atlanta. The “I-3”, as it became known, served as the basis for the Vaccine for Children Program. And for the next 12 years, Karen worked in many of the other new areas of public health that were developed within CDC to respond to the changing world of health. Among her work is the Managed Care Office which was developed to address the burgeoning effects and impacts of managed care and HMO’s not only on public health but also on the public’s health; the Graduate Certificate Program which focused on the learning and development needs of the public health workforce at CDC and in the States; the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program and the National Center for Public Health Informatics which were established to address fundamental changes in the landscape of public health as well as the Prevention Support Office which was a forerunner to her current assignment as a Senior Management Official in the State of Washington.