Epidemiologist
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Dr. Charlene Siza is a veterinarian and epidemiologist for the International Infection Control Branch (IICB), in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this position, Dr. Siza works with partners all around the world, including universities, hospitals, and U.N. agencies, to develop infection prevention and control guidance and policies, to improve the detection and response to antimicrobial resistant organisms and to better understand antimicrobial use patterns.
Prior to joining IICB, Dr. Siza began her CDC career in 2016 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer assigned to the Alabama Department of Public Health, where she worked in domestic infectious disease outbreaks and emergency response preparedness. Upon successfully completing the EIS program, she worked for 4 years as an emergency public health epidemiologist within the Global Rapid Response Team (GRRT) at CDC’s Emergency Response and Recovery Branch. In this role, she served as a recognized expert in surveillance and epidemiology during public health and natural disaster emergency responses throughout the world. In her time with GRRT, she worked internationally in 6 different countries and worked directly with foreign ministries of health, UN agencies, and other international public health organizations. Some of her response work included Polio outbreak response in Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and Kenya, Ebola outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of Congo, hurricane and cholera outbreak response in Mozambique, and finally COVID-19 outbreak response in Brazil. In addition to her international work, Dr. Siza has worked extensively within the CDC Emergency Operations Center on the Ebola, Polio, and COVID-19 responses in areas of healthcare systems, deployer engagement, travel restrictions, and special studies.