Director, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

Charles J. Rothwell, MBA, MS, serves as the director for the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). He came to Federal government service in 1987 as Associate Director of NCHS responsible for IT and information services of the Center. In 2003, he became the Director of the Division of Vital Statistics.

Before entering Federal service, Mr. Rothwell spent thirteen years in the State Health Department in North Carolina and while there developed the position and became the first director of the State Center for Health Statistics. He was responsible for health statistics, public health IT and statewide public health planning activities, and served as an adjunct assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, and the University of North Carolina, Health Services Research Center.

Over the years he has been an advisor to the Agency for the International Development (AID) and the United Nations (U.N.) for automating Peru’s national statistical activities; served as a member of a U.S. multi-disciplinary scientific team providing on-site consultative services to East Germany, and U.S. representative to a U.N. technical advisory committee that helped develop electronic data transmission standards between countries, U.N. affiliates and the U.N. He was a past member of the Robert Wood Johnson Advisory Committee on Information Technology for state governments. He helped to develop the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) digital government initiative to build partnerships between computer science academia and non-defense federal agencies and was a member of the IT Board of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program and NSF Computer Science Large Systems selection committee.

He also served on a peer review team for the Library of Congress for their National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). For a change of pace he also served as a legislative assistant for Senator Lieberman, working primarily on bipartisan health care reform legislation and as the lead legislative staffer on education issues.

Mr. Rothwell served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, reaching the rank of captain. He attended the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, majoring in physics, minor in mathematics and received a bachelor of science. He received his master of science in operations research and systems analysis, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and his master of business administration from the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.