Dr. Rochelle Walensky
Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Rochelle Paula Walensky (nee Bersoff) was born in April 1959 in Peabody, Massachusetts. She earned an undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis. She received an MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She earned an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health.
She has been on the faculty at Harvard Medicinal School and served as the chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was the chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health and served as a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents.
Dr. Walensky was nominated by President Biden to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was confirmed by the Senate and began her tenure on January 20, 2021.
She is married to Loren S. Walensky and they have three sons. They are Jewish.
In the News…
The White House coronavirus response team is seeking to address the current dichotomy in the U.S. with optimism from the speed of the vaccine rollout, saying that it must be balanced with continued restraint in moving forward with normalcy.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made an emotional appeal to Americans. “We do not have the luxury of inaction. For the health of our country, we must work together now to prevent a fourth surge,” she said.
She added, “The thing that’s different this time is we actually have it in our power to be done with this scale of vaccination and will be so much slower if we have another surge to deal with as well. I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done. I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, but not quite yet.”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Dr. Walensky today? You can let her know at:
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30329
