AIDS Researcher Named New CDC Director

ATLANTA, GA — A noted AIDS researcher has been named the next leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert R. Redfield will become the Atlanta-based centers' 18th director, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced Wednesday.

"Dr. Redfield has dedicated his entire life to promoting public health and providing compassionate care to his patients, and we are proud to welcome him as director of the world’s premier epidemiological agency," Azar said in a news release. "Dr. Redfield’s scientific and clinical background is peerless."

During his two-decade tenure at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Redfield made pioneering contributions to the scientific community's understanding of HIV and AIDS. More recently, he has run a treatment network in Baltimore for HIV and Hepatitis C patients.

Brenda Fitzgerald, President Donald Trump's pick for director of the CDC, resigned in January following revelations that she bought shares in a tobacco company just a month into her leadership. The agency is tasked, among many other things, with reducing tobacco use.

Since then, Dr. Anne Schuchat has served as acting director.

"All of us at HHS are grateful to Dr. Anne Schuchat for her service as Acting Director at CDC, especially during this year’s severe flu season," Azar said. "We look forward to CDC continuing its important work on the opioid epidemic and America’s many other pressing public health challenges."

Redfield has been a public health leader working in clinical research and clinical care of chronic human viral infections and infectious diseases, especially HIV, for more than 30 years. He served as the founding director of the Department of Retroviral Research within the U.S. military’s HIV Research Program, and retired after 20 years of service in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

Following his military service, he co-founded the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology with Dr. William Blattner and Dr. Robert C. Gallo and served as the Chief of Infectious Diseases and Vice Chair of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Redfield made several important early contributions to the scientific understanding of HIV, including the demonstration of the importance of heterosexual transmission, the development of the Walter Reed staging system for HIV infection, and the demonstration of active HIV replication in all stages of HIV infection.

In addition to his research work, Redfield oversaw an extensive clinical program providing HIV care and treatment to more than 5,000 patients in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. community.

He served as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS from 2005 to 2009, and was appointed as Chair of the International Subcommittee from 2006 to 2009.

He is a past member of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health, the Fogarty International Center Advisory Board at the National Institutes of Health, and the Advisory Anti-Infective Agent Committee of the Food and Drug Administration.

Photo courtesy University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology