Veterinary public health fellowship in the works
Throughout her career, Dr. Marguerite Pappaioanou has studied and applied the interconnectedness of human and animal health to improve global health. Now, she and a nonprofit are teaming up to encourage veterinary careers in public health—both domestically and globally.
A partnership between Dr. Pappaioanou and the CDC Foundation has created the Pappaioanou Veterinary Public Health and Applied Epidemiology Fellowship. It will provide competitively selected veterinarians as well as third- and fourth-year veterinary students with opportunities for an applied, hands-on training experience in epidemiology, public health, or global health. Each fellow will spend up to one year with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention working on a U.S.-focused or global public health project.
More details on the application process and how much each fellow will receive should be determined by mid-spring, said Pierce Nelson, vice president for communications for the CDC Foundation.
Dr. Pappaioanou currently serves as CDC’s liaison to the Food and Drug Administration for food safety. She has over 30 years of experience working on domestic and global public health issues, including 22 plus years as an epidemiologist with the CDC, beginning in 1983. Dr. Pappaioanou coordinated many of CDC’s international programs and its international response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome and avian influenza outbreaks in 2003.
On retiring from the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service in 2005, she moved to the University of Minnesota School of Public Health as professor of infectious disease epidemiology, with a joint appointment in the College of Veterinary Medicine. There, she led National Institutes of Health- and CDC-funded research programs focused on surveillance for emerging zoonotic infectious diseases at the human-animal interface. From 2007-2011, Dr. Pappaioanou was executive director of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. Just prior to rejoining CDC in 2013, she was senior one-health technical adviser to the Emerging Pandemic Threats/Respond Project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, at Development Alternatives Inc. in Bethesda, Md.
“I am thrilled that through this fund veterinarians will have support to pursue exciting opportunities at CDC to improve human health and well being, and the environment in which we all live,” she said in a CDC Foundation press release.
The CDC Foundation is an independent, nonprofit organization that connects the CDC with private-sector organizations and individuals to build public health programs. Since 1995, the CDC Foundation has provided $400 million to support CDC’s work and has launched more than 700 programs.
Related JAVMA content:
Pappaioanou resigns from AAVMC (Dec. 1, 2011)