2022 Leadership Journey Project: Enhancing the Diversity of Global Public Health Technical Advisory Groups
Dr. Susan A. Wang is a physician and epidemiologist with more than 25 years of public health experience. She is Associate Chief of Science for the Accelerated Diseases Control Branch in the Global Immunization Division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has broad expertise in domestic and global immunization (vaccine policy and strategy, vaccine implementation, program evaluation, costing), cervical cancer prevention and control, hepatitis B prevention, adolescent health, domestic and global surveillance to monitor antimicrobial resistance, and infection control. She has worked extensively on outbreak investigations as well as on CDC public health responses to Monkeypox (2022), COVID-19 (2020 -2022), Zika (2017), Ebola in Liberia (2014), influenza (2004), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Taiwan (2003).
Dr. Wang worked at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva as part of the Secretariat of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) in immunization to support development of the first WHO interim recommendations for use of COVID-19 vaccines and to support updates to recommendations for use of rotavirus, pneumococcal, Ebola, and polio vaccines and to evaluate SAGE itself. During 2009-2014, she served as New Vaccines Medical Officer at WHO, providing technical and strategic support to countries in all six WHO Regions and to global partners for the introduction of new vaccines. She launched and led the WHO work for HPV vaccine implementation in countries and advised GAVI on HPV vaccine programme implementation.
Dr. Wang led a multi-disciplinary SAGE Working Group of experts over a 2-year period to establish the global strategy for using new vaccine introductions to strengthen health systems. She was lead or co-author of more than 30 WHO publications on new vaccines, including guidance documents on how to introduce vaccines in the context of comprehensive diarrhea, pneumonia, and cervical cancer prevention and in the context of integrated service delivery. Dr. Wang received a Public Health Service Meritorious Service Medal for her extraordinary leadership and exceptional initiative which significantly contributed to achievement of the vaccine introduction goal of the Global Vaccine Action Plan.
As a pediatrician and an internist, Dr. Wang is passionate about comprehensive preventive and primary care which is patient and community focused. She received her AB degree from Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her MD and MPH from Columbia University in New York City. Following residency at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, she practiced as a primary care physician before she joined CDC. She is an alumna of CDC’s disease detective program, the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
