Town Hall Meeting Speakers

Foodborne Illness: Common, Costly...Preventable
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
2:00 - 3:00 PM EST

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Speakers' Biographies

Olga L. Henao, PhD

Team Lead, Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network

Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases

National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, CDC

Olga L. Henao, PhD, is the team lead for CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet). She received her MPH in epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She then worked at the Alabama Department of Public Health before returning to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to pursue her PhD in epidemiology.Dr. Henao has been with CDC for 6.5 years, leading efforts to collect and analyze surveillance, conducting studies to understand causes of foodborne illness, and monitoring the burden of foodborne illness over time.

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Timothy Jones, MD

State Epidemiologist, Tennessee Department of Health

Timothy Jones, MD, completed medical school at Stanford University and a residency in family medicine at the Brown University/Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island program. He joined CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service in 1997. He now serves as the state epidemiologist for the Tennessee Department of Health. Dr. Jones is active in many studies and projects with CDC, the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists, the Institute of Medicine and other national and international organizations. He has also served as a short-term consultant to the World Health Organization, testified to Congress on public health matters, and has more than 110 peer-reviewed publications on a variety of public health topics, with a special focus on food safety.

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Sarah L. Lathrop, DVM, PhD

Associate Professor of Pathology

University of New Mexico

At the University of New Mexico, Sarah L. Lathrop, DVM, PhD, serves as Associate Professor of Pathology and an Epidemiologist with the Office of the Medical Investigator. Dr. Lathrop received her undergraduate education at Colorado State University and earned her DVM from the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She practiced veterinary medicine in Cortez, Colorado, and then completed her PhD in veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University. Dr. Lathrop served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer at CDC, studying vector-borne infectious diseases. After a brief stint in industry overseeing clinical vaccine trials, Dr. Lathrop joined the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center in 2003 to conduct epidemiological studies using medical examiner data. She has been serving as the Principal Investigator for the FoodNet portion of New Mexico's Emerging Infections Program since 2006.

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Dana Pitts, MPH

Associate Director for Communications

Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases

National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, CDC

Dana Pitts, MPH, leads scientific communications for CDC’s division responsible for foodborne, waterborne, and environmental diseases and covers both domestic and international issues. She worked as the Health Communication Specialist for CDC’s Global Disease Detection Program prior to this position. Pittsbegan her career as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State. She later completed her Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at the University of California, Los Angeles in policy and management. She has worked for more than 20 years building strategic communications in a variety of fields and settings and has extensive experience in cultivating strong partnerships amongst diverse organizations and stakeholders.

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