November 8, 2016 Dear Tribal Leaders: I am pleased to announce that as of November 14, Jose T. Montero, MD, MHCDS, will serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Office for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (OSTLTS) and as a CDC deputy director. Dr. Montero will also assume the role of the Designated Federal Official for CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's (ATSDR) Tribal Advisory Committee (TAC). Dr. Montero's extensive leadership experience in public health systems makes him an ideal choice to guide OSTLTS in its mission to support and strengthen the nation's health departments and public health system. Most recently, Dr. Montero served as vice president of Population Health and Health System Integration at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Keene, New Hampshire. He is a former president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, was director of Public Health for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services for seven years, and served as New Hampshire's state epidemiologist for eight years. He worked closely with CDC as chair of the Social Determinants of Health Think Tank, a subgroup of the STLT Subcommittee to the Advisory Committee to the Director of CDC, and as a member of the CDC Advisory Committee to the Director to prevent tuberculosis in healthcare settings. Dr. Montero fulfills several national public health roles, serving on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Population Health Improvement, the National Academy for State Health Policy, the New Hampshire Citizens Health Initiative, the Dartmouth Medical School Leadership Preventive Medicine Residency Advisory Committee, and the Foundation for Healthy Communities. Dr. Montero earned a medical degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He specialized in family medicine and completed his residency at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. He has an epidemiology degree from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, and a master of health care delivery science from Dartmouth College. I want to thank John Auerbach, MBA, for serving as acting director of OSTLTS, as well as Ursula Bauer, PhD, for serving as the Designated Federal Official for the CDC/ASTOR TAC. Their dedication and service during the search for a new director was invaluable and preserved the integrity of our government -to-government relationship. Sincerely, Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH Director, CDC