Yoon - Leadership

Paula Yoon, ScD, MPH

Director

Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance

Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services

Office of Public Health Scientific Services

Paula Yoon, ScD, MPH, is director of the Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance (DHIS). In this position, Dr. Yoon provides leadership and oversight of activities that support two national surveillance programs (National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System and National Syndromic Surveillance Program); information system development for data collection, exchange, and processing; and the DHIS Data Hub, which provides access to health-related data sources used for disease prevention and control.

Previously, Dr. Yoon was the director of the Division of Epidemiology, Analysis, and Library Services, Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services. In this position, Dr. Yoon oversaw cross-cutting programs that included measurement of population health and health disparities, access to and analytic support for the use of healthcare data for public health, Epi Info software development and application for epidemiologic investigations, systematic reviews of community preventive services, and access to scientific literature and reference services.

Dr. Yoon joined CDC in 1994 as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service in the Birth Defects and Pediatric Genetics Branch where she conducted investigations of birth defects and was the principal investigator of the National Birth Defects Prevention Study.

Dr. Yoon also worked in CDC’s Office of Public Health Genomics where she led an initiative to evaluate the use of family medical histories as a public health strategy that included the development of a Web-based family history collection tool and a clinical trial to evaluate the tool.

Dr. Yoon also led the Health Services Research and Registries Team in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention.

Before joining CDC, Dr. Yoon worked at the World Health Organization and the U.N. International Labour Office in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Johns Hopkins Institute for International Programs in Baltimore, Maryland. She also was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya.

Dr. Yoon received her master’s degree in public health and a doctor of science degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Her bachelor’s degree was earned at Boston College.