Loria Pollack, MD, MPH

Loria Pollack, MD, MPH

Lori A. “Loria” Pollack, MD, MPH, is the Medical Director for CDC’s National Program of Cancer Registries in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC). Dr. Pollack focuses on innovative approaches to cancer data collection and analyses in multi-state registry projects. Her work contributes to the availability of high-quality U.S. Cancer Statistics through on-demand data visualizations for the public and data sets for researchers. She serves as CDC liaison to the American Joint Committee on Cancer and works with other national organizations to develop cancer surveillance standards, including co-chairing a workgroup to align U.S. cancer coding with World Health Organization tumor terminology.

Dr. Pollack joined CDC in 2002 as a U.S. Public Health Service officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service after receiving degrees in medicine and public health from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She completed Columbia University’s internal medicine residency in Cooperstown, New York, a second preventive medicine residency, and is board-certified in both specialties.

Her career includes remarkably diverse experience in chronic disease, infectious disease, and local public health. Dr. Pollack served from 2002 to 2012 in DCPC’s Epidemiology and Applied Research Branch, primarily characterizing the issue of cancer survivorship and leading national efforts related to quality of life and care after cancer treatment. In 2012, she was assigned to the Medical Director of the local health department in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was instrumental in designing a new HIV prevention program that included outreach to the most at-risk population, including linkage to treatment. She also spent three years (2013 to 2015) in CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, focused on preventing health care-associated illness and addressing antibiotic resistance. Dr. Pollack led a collaboration with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to develop antibiotic stewardship program indicators included in CDC’s National Health Safety Network annual hospital survey.

Dr. Pollack has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers and government reports in epidemiology, health service research, and quality improvement. She has served on many of CDC’s public health emergency responses, including on the clinical care and immunization safety teams and at an airport quarantine station during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also led the e-Cigarette, or Vaping, Product Use-Associated Lung Injury epidemiology team, collected data on fungal meningitis from contaminated injections, and assessed hospital preparedness on the domestic Ebola response. A driving theme in Dr. Pollack’s career is the translation and dissemination of research into practical guidance and tools to improve health and health care.

Dr. Pollack shares her perspective on the use of data to inform public health in the blog post, Data on the Forefront: How CDC Keeps Measuring Progress and Targeting Action. She talks about the importance of cancer registry data to understanding how cancer affects the United States in this podcast.

A comprehensive list of Dr. Pollack peer-review publications can be found on PubMed. The most recent and noteworthy articles Dr. Pollack has authored include—

Page last reviewed: August 15, 2022