Captain, United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Acting Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
United States

Dr. Melinda Wharton currently serves as the Acting Director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Wharton served as the Acting Director of the Immunization Safety Office (ISO), where she provided overall leadership for the office and help to guide ISOs transition from CDCs Office of the Director to the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, National Center for Preparedness, Detection, and Control of Infectious Diseases.

She has previously managed CDC programs in infant immunization and childhood vaccine-preventable diseases, served as Division Director for epidemiology and surveillance, and then as Deputy Director in the former National Immunization Program (NIP). Since 2006 she has served as Deputy Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. She has worked extensively on issues related to vaccine policy, vaccine safety science, and public health response. Dr. Wharton holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and her infectious diseases fellowship at the Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Wharton was commissioned as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in 1986 and was assigned to the Tennessee Department of Health and Environment in Nashville, TN. In 1989, she joined CDC as a medical epidemiologist in the Epidemiology Program Office.

She joined the National Immunization Program in 1992, holding chief positions in the Infant Immunization Section, Surveillance, Investigations, and Research Branch, and the Child Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch, Epidemiology and Surveillance Division, and serving as Director, Epidemiology and Surveillance Division. In January 2004 she became Acting Deputy Director of NIP.Dr. Wharton has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific journal articles, book chapters, and CDC publications, including MMWR articles.