Renee Calanan, PhD, MS is Health Equity Coordinator for the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her primary roles are to promote and support NCEZID divisions’ health equity activities and represent NCEZID on cross-agency and interagency committees. She focuses on fostering innovative public health science, interventions, partnerships, and infrastructure to reduce health disparities in emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases.

During CDC’s COVID-19 Response, Dr. Calanan worked to stand up the agency’s first-ever Chief Health Equity Officer unit. She contributed to the COVID-19 Response Health Equity Strategy, authored several health equity webpages, and led creation of the response’s health equity style guide, which was the foundation for the agency’s Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication. Previously, Dr. Calanan served as Senior Chronic Disease Epidemiologist in CDC’s State Chronic Disease Epidemiology Program. In this role, she assisted the state health department in Colorado to build sustainable capacity in chronic disease epidemiology and provided technical assistance to collect, analyze, interpret, and disseminate data to support evidence-based decision making for equitable public health programs. Dr. Calanan began her service in the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the Utah Department of Health. She received her PhD in epidemiology and community health from the University at Buffalo School of Public Health. {/sliders}