Division of STD Prevention Acting Director

Role at CDC

Dr. Puja Seth is the Acting Director of the Division of STD Prevention. In this role, she provides leadership and guidance in STD prevention and control across the Division's scientific and programmatic activities. She also leads strategic planning efforts and coordinates priority initiatives to advance DSTDP's agenda.

Dr. Seth began her CDC career in 2009 as a fellow in the Division of STD Prevention and then went on to work on international and domestic HIV programs, research, and evaluation activities for roughly six years. During this time, Dr. Seth held positions in the Division of Global HIV/AIDS and TB and the Division of HIV Prevention. Her areas of expertise included HIV testing and HIV service delivery to people living with HIV, program evaluation, conducting multi-country randomized controlled trials, and providing technical assistance to states and countries.

Dr. Seth also served as the Healthy Aging Branch Chief in the Division of Population Health, where she oversaw the Alzheimer's Disease and Arthritis Programs as well as led the development of a Healthy Aging Strategic Framework. From 2016 to 2022, she led the epidemiology and surveillance activities in the Division of Overdose Prevention as a team lead and then a branch chief. Dr. Seth oversaw the conceptualization and implementation of the surveillance strategies for CDC's Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) program, a $1.2 billion program and the Enhanced State Opioid Overdose Surveillance (ESOOS) Program, the first CDC program to specifically fund jurisdictions for nonfatal and fatal overdose surveillance.

Dr. Seth is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including several CDC Honor Awards, Honor Awards from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the Charles Shepard Science Award. She is a licensed psychologist and an adjunct faculty member in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Dr. Seth received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Georgia and completed her clinical internship at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Baltimore VA. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and at Grady's Infectious Disease Clinic, where she provided mental health care. Dr. Seth received her master's degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and her B.S. degrees in psychology and sociology from the College of Charleston. She has over 90 publications in peer-reviewed journals, MMWRs, book chapters, and government reports and has given or contributed to over 100 presentations.