The alumni streak at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has resumed. Jeffrey Koplan, M.P.H.' 78, is the new director of the CDC and the sixth School alumnus to hold the agency's top post. Koplan's selection was announced in July, and he started work in October. A Boston native, Koplan, 53, started his career at the CDC in 1972 as an epidemic intelligence officer, one of the agency's celebrated disease detectives, and worked for the agency for the next 22 years. In the early 1980s, as researchers were just beginning to understand that HIV was a blood-borne virus, Koplan was a member of the group at the CDC that pushed for stricter blood-banking policies. In And the Band Played On, the late Randy Shilts's book about the first years of the AIDS epidemic, Koplan is quoted as saying, "To bury our heads in the sand and say, 'Let's wait for more cases' is not an adequate public health measure." In 1984, Koplan led a U.S. government investigation of the explosion at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. Five years later, Koplan was named the first director of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, a post he held for six years. He also established a breast and cervical cancer screening program at the disease agency that grew from a small program with a budget of about $500,000 in 1987 to one with a national reach and more than $100 million in funds.

Koplan left the CDC in 1994 to work for Atlanta-based Prudential Healthcare, which is part of the Prudential Insurance Company of America. There he was president of a health outcomes research and analysis center.

The director's post at CDC had been vacant since February when David Satcher was named U.S. Surgeon General. As head of the CDC, Koplan is in charge of a sprawling, 6,900-employee agency with national and international responsibilities. Traditionally, the CDC has been concerned with investigating and curbing outbreaks of infectious disease, work for which the agency has achieved worldwide acclaim. It was not unusual, for example, for the agency to send a team of investigators last summer to look in to the Hong Kong flu outbreak that "jumped" from chickens to infect people. But because of the agency's broad public health mandate, the CDC has also in recent years added programs in violence, chronic disease, and the disease-prevention potential of managed care. Koplan's selection was widely praised, although some experts did express concerns about Koplan being a CDC insider.

The School's streak of having alumni serve as CDC directors started in 1962 with James Goddard, M.P.H.' 55, and continued for the next 23 years. The other alumni to hold the post were David Sencer, M.P.H.' 58; William Foege, M.P.H.' 65; James Mason, D.P.H.' 67; and Donald Hopkins, M.P.H.' 70, who served as acting director.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) may be found on the web at: http://www.cdc.gov.