August 8, 2017: Miranda Bodfish completed the Emory MDP program as part of the inaugural class in 2012, and joined CDC’s Center for Global Health as a Public Health Analyst and Presidential Management Fellow after graduation.  She recently moved into the position of Senior Public Health Advisor with the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS).  Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CHAMPS aims to to increase understanding of how, where, and why children are getting sick, enabling scientists and public health leaders around the world to take action. CHAMPS is a partnership between many organizations, including the Emory Global Health Institute, the International Association of National Public Health Institutes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and the Public Health Informatics Institute at the Task Force for Global Health that form the CHAMPS Program Office in Atlanta, as well as 7 surveillance sites in sub Saharan Africa and south Asia.

In her role as Senior Public Health Advisor, Miranda is focused on the management of CDC’s participation in CHAMPS, as well as the scientific components of CHAMPS implementation.  Based on her prior CDC experience providing technical assistance to countries in strengthening their public health systems, she is also engaged in supporting CHAMPS sites and countries to utilize surveillance data and findings to inform public health action. In her position, she has been able to utilize the skills she learned in MDP to manage a multidisciplinary team, strengthen partnerships, ensure accountability for CHAMPS resources, and contribute to strategic approaches to CHAMPS implementation, evaluation, and the use of surveillance data for public health action.

Before Miranda was at CHAMPS, she was a Presidential Management Fellow and Public Health Analyst in CDC's Center for Global Health Office of the Director and Division of Global HIV/AIDS. Through this fellowship, she provided direct support to CDC country office operations and to the implementation of CDC’s global health strategy.  Following her fellowship, she joint CDC’s National Public Health Institute Program as Program Manager, providing technical assistance to establish and strengthen public health institutes (CDC-like organizations) in countries around the world.  During the Ebola epidemic, Miranda completed three deployments as CDC’s Deputy Ebola Response Lead in Guinea.    

As a global Public Health Advisor at CDC, Miranda has conducted many field visits with CDC Country Offices and international partners.  During her time as National Public Health Institute Program Manager, she worked closely with the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) U.S. Office at Emory University to establish and strengthen public health institutes in places like Zambia, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Myanmar, Cambodia, and the African Union.  Working in the field in this role involved convening and facilitating meetings with government leaders and public health stakeholders to define public health priorities and develop strategies and plans to strengthen a country’s public health system to meet these priorities.  Zambia recently launched its own Zambia National Public Health Institute as well as a Regional Collaborating Center of the African Union’s Africa CDC as a result of this work.

While Miranda has built her CDC career, she has used many of the skills that are emphasized in the MDP curriculum, such as the ability to communicate across disciplines. The MDP program is interdisciplinary in nature and this allows graduates to strengthen communication between multiple stakeholders and experts whose work is grounded in a specific technical perspective, in order to work together toward a common development goal.  Her time in the MDP degree program has also allowed her to engage well with international partners, using diplomatic communication to collaborate with partners at multiple levels and of multiple backgrounds. She has been able to successfully navigate working in a global space while utilizing communication skills derived from her time with the MDP program.

When Miranda is not busy successfully utilizing her MDP degree, she enjoys playing the flute, a talent she has been able to bring to the CDC by joining coworkers to play at various events, practicing yoga, and re-landscaping her backyard with her husband, James.

Photo: Miranda Bodfish