Featured Speakers | 2024 CSTE Conference

2021 CSTE Conference Featured Speakers

The main conference from Monday to Wednesday will explore leading edge epidemiology that aligns with this year’s theme – “Building Bridges to Health.” There will be plenary sessions with renowned keynote speakers on Monday to Wednesday from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. (EDT), and broad-ranging scientific sessions related to diversity, equity, and social justice, resiliency and public health, and COVID-19. The Jonathan Mann Memorial Lecture and awards banquet is open to all registered attendees this year on Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. (EDT). Below are our featured keynote speakers.

Torian Easterling

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Kelly Henning, MD

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Rachel L. Levine

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Graham Mooney, PhD

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Linda Murray, MD, MPH

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Paul Offit, MD

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Rochelle P. Walensky

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Andrew T. Pavia, MD, FAAP, FACP, FIDSA

University of Utah

Andrew Pavia M.D. is the George and Esther Gross Presidential Professor and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah. He also serves as Director of Hospital Epidemiology at Primary Children’s Medical Center and Associate Director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program. He received his MD from Brown University and was a resident and Chief resident in Medicine at Dartmouth. He served as an EIS officer and Preventive Medicine Resident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he worked on diarrheal disease and HIV. He did Pediatric and Adult ID fellowship at the University of Utah.

He is the author of over 200 peer-reviewed papers and 45 invited reviews, editorials and textbook chapters. He currently serves as an advisor to CDC and the Utah Department of Health on COVID-19, and is a member of the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s (formerly known as the IOM) Preparedness Forum. Dr. Pavia co-chairs the Influenza Guidelines Writing Committee for the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), and chaired the IDWeek Program Committee for 2018. He previously served on the Board of Scientific Counselors for CDC, was a board member of IDSA and chair of the IDSA Pandemic Influenza task force and the IDSA Public Health Committee. He has served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and the National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB) where he chaired the influenza working group during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.

He was voted “Utahn of the year” by the Salt Lake Tribune for his efforts to advocate for children during the COVID-19 pandemic and was awarded the “Roz McGee Children’s Champion” award by Voices for Utah Children.

Dr. Kelly Henning

Director of Global Health Program at Bloomberg Philanthropies

Dr. Kelly Henning is a medical doctor and epidemiologist trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and public health in the United States of America. She received her epidemiology training in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Subsequently, Dr. Henning has been an associate professor in infectious disease and hospital epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Henning was the Director of the newly formed Division of Epidemiology at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from 2003 – 2006 before joining Bloomberg Philanthropies in January 2007.

She currently directs global health programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, including the $1 billion, 16 year Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use — a global project aimed at curbing the tobacco epidemic in low and middle income countries and the Bloomberg Global Road Safety Program – an 18 year, $500 million global program to reduce road traffic deaths in low and middle income countries. Since March 2020, Dr. Henning has been leading the $40 million COVID-19 global response for Bloomberg Philanthropies – to support immediate action in preventing or slowing the spread of COVID-19 in vulnerable low and middle-income countries, particularly those in Africa.

Rachel L. Levine, MD

Assistant Secretary for Health U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Dr. Rachel L. Levine serves as the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where she fights every day to improve the health and well-being of all Americans. She’s working to help our nation overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and build a stronger foundation for a healthier future – one in which every American can attain their full health potential. Dr. Levine’s storied career, first in academic medicine, and as a physician then Pennsylvania’s Physician General and then as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, has focused on the intersection between mental and physical health, often treating children, adolescents, and young adults.

Dr. Graham Mooney

Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at JHU

Graham Mooney is an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at JHU, where he also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology. Trained a geographer, he is interested in the history of public health in the UK and US, including infectious disease surveillance and control; historical geographies of health and medicine; and historical epidemiology. His 2015 book Intrusive Interventions: Public Health, Domestic Space, and Infectious Disease Surveillance in England 1840-1914 examines infectious disease notification, institutional and domestic isolation, disinfection, and contact tracing as spatialized aspects of liberal governance. Dr Mooney’s work on COVID-19 has featured in The Atlantic, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and on NPR.

Dr. Linda Rae Murray

Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health

Dr. Murray has spent her career serving the medically under served. She has worked in a variety of settings including practicing Occupational Medicine at a Workers Clinic in Canada, Residency Director for Occupational Medicine at Meharry Medical College, and Bureau Chief for the Chicago Department of Health under Mayor Harold Washington. Dr. Murray worked as Medical Director of the federally funded health center, Winfield Moody, serving Cabrini Green Public Housing Project in Chicago. Dr. Murray has been an active member of a wide range of local and national organizations including serving as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Board of Directors of Trinity Health ( a large Catholic Health system).

In 1997 Dr. Murray returned to the Cook County Health System where she served as Chief Medical Officer – Primary Care for the twenty three primary care and community health centers comprising the Ambulatory & Community Health Network of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services; and as an attending physician in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Cook County Hospital. Dr. Murray has worked in leadership roles in many public health organizations including NACCHO’s (National Association of City & County Health Officers) Health Equity and Social Justice Team, the national executive board of APHA. During 2011 she served as President of the American Public Health Association. In December 2014, she retired from her position as the Chief Medical officer for the Cook County Department of Public Health of the Cook County Health & Hospital System, the PHAB accredited and state certified public health department for suburban Cook County. In December 2018 Dr. Murray stopped seeing patients as a voluntary attending in Internal Medicine ending over forty years of clinical practice.

Today she serves as an Honorary Attending of Cook County Health and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. She serves on many local and national boards including the Chicago based Health and Medicine Policy Research Group; and chairs the board for the National Collaborative for Health Equity. She remains passionate about increasing the number of Black and Latinx health professionals and serves on the Urban Health Program Community Advisory Committee at the University of Illinois. Dr. Murray is devoting the rest of her career to being an enthusiastic full time trouble maker. She has been a voice for social justice and health as a basic human right for over fifty years.

Dr. Paul Offit

Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Paul A. Offit, MD is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as well as the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Offit has published more than 160 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC in 2006 and by the WHO in 2013; for this achievement Dr. Offit received the Luigi Mastroianni and William Osler Awards from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the Charles Mérieux Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases; and was honored by Bill and Melinda Gates during the launch of their Foundation’s Living Proof Project for global health. In 2009, Dr. Offit received the President’s Certificate for Outstanding Service from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In 2011, Dr. Offit received the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Biologics Industry Organization (BIO), the David E. Rogers Award from the American Association of Medical Colleges, the Odyssey Award from the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2012, Dr. Offit received the Distinguished Medical Achievement Award from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Drexel Medicine Prize in Translational Medicine from the Drexel University College of Medicine. In 2013, Dr. Offit received the Maxwell Finland award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the Distinguished Alumnus award from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and the Innovators in Health Award from the Group Health Foundation. In 2015, Dr. Offit won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching from the University of Pennsylvania and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016, Dr. Offit won the Franklin Founder Award from the city of Philadelphia, The Porter Prize from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Philadelphia Business Journal, and the Jonathan E. Rhoads Medal for Distinguished Service to Medicine from the American Philosophical Society.

In 2018, Dr. Offit received the Gold Medal from the Sabin Vaccine Institute and in 2019 the John P. McGovern Award from the American Medical Writers Association and in 2020 the Public Educator Award from CHILD USA. Dr. Offit was a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is currently a member of the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee and is a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation and the Foundation for Vaccine Research.

He is also the author of nine medical narratives: The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to Today’s Growing Vaccine Crisis (Yale University Press, 2005), Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases (HarperCollins, 2007), for which he won an award from the American Medical Writers Association, Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure (Columbia University Press, 2008), Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (Basic Books, 2011), which was selected by Kirkus Reviews and Booklist as one of the best non-fiction books of the year, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine (HarperCollins, 2013), which won the Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking from the Center for Skeptical Inquiry and was selected by National Public Radio as one of the best books of 2013, Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine (Basic Books, 2015), which was selected by the New York Times Book Review as an “Editor’s Choice” book in April 2015, Pandora’s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong (National Geographic Press/Random House, April 2017), which was nominated for Best Science and Technology book of 2017 by Goodreads, Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information (Columbia University Press, June 2018), Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far (HarperCollins, April, 2020), and You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccinations—The Long and Risky History of Medical Innovations (Basic Books, in press).

Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH

The 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the ninth Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, is the 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the ninth Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. She is an influential scholar whose pioneering research has helped advance the national and global response to HIV/AIDS. Dr. Walensky is also a well-respected expert on the value of testing and treatment of deadly viruses.

Dr. Walensky served as Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2017-2020 and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2012-2020. She served on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic and conducted research on vaccine delivery and strategies to reach underserved communities.

Dr. Walensky is recognized internationally for her work to improve HIV screening and care in South Africa and nationally recognized for motivating health policy and informing clinical trial design and evaluation in a variety of settings.

She is a past Chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, Chair-elect of the HIV Medical Association, and previously served as an advisor to both the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Originally from Maryland, Dr. Walensky received her Bachelor of Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, her Doctor of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and her Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.