Atlanta Spotlight | Lisa Waddell

By Staff Writer Atlanta Trend

• Sep 01, 2020

The CDC Foundation today announced that Lisa Waddell, MD, MPH, has been named chief medical officer (CMO). This is a new position for the CDC Foundation and was created to aid in the Foundation’s COVID-19 emergency response. As CMO, Waddell will manage COVID-19 response efforts, including directing the Foundation’s team of senior advisors, who are providing support to health departments across the nation, and the COVID-19 Corps surge staff hired as part of the response. In this role, Waddell will serve on the Foundation’s executive team.

“As work on the response continues at a rapid pace, we identified the need for a physician and seasoned public health leader to provide oversight and guidance to our response team,” said Judith Monroe, MD, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation. “Lisa’s experience and knowledge make her an ideal candidate for this role. We are excited to have her on our team.”

Waddell has a long and distinguished career in public health. She joins the CDC Foundation from the March of Dimes, where she served as deputy chief medical and health officer and the senior vice president for Maternal and Child Health Impact nationwide. Prior to the March of Dimes, Waddell worked with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials as chief of community health and prevention. Before this role, she served as deputy commissioner for Health Services for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, the state’s public health agency.
She is a member of several professional organizations including the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM), the American Public Health Association (APHA), the National Medical Association and the South Carolina Public Health Association.

Waddell received her doctor of medicine from the Medical College of Virginia and a bachelor’s in biology from the University of Virginia. She completed her residency in preventive medicine/public health from the Medical College of Virginia, and she received her master’s in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a graduate of the National Public Health Leadership Institute.

The CDC Foundation helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) save and improve lives by unleashing the power of collaboration between CDC, philanthropies, corporations, organizations and individuals to protect the health, safety and security of America and the world. The CDC Foundation is the go-to nonprofit authorized by Congress to mobilize philanthropic partners and private-sector resources to support CDC’s critical health protection mission. Since 1995, the CDC Foundation has raised over $1 billion and launched more than 1,000 programs impacting a variety of health threats from chronic disease conditions including cardiovascular disease and cancer, to infectious diseases like rotavirus and HIV, to emergency responses, including COVID-19 and Ebola. The CDC Foundation managed hundreds of CDC-led programs in the United States and in more than 140 countries last year. For more information, visit https://www.cdcfoundation.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.