News

Degutis Elected Next President of American Public Health Association

Linda Degutis, Dr.PH. ’94, M.S.N. ’82, associate professor of surgery (emergency medicine) at the Yale School of Medicine and associate professor of public health in the division of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health, has been named President-elect of the American Public Health Association (APHA). She will begin her term at the 135th Annual Meeting in fall 2007.

The APHA is the oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world and represents more than 50,000 members spanning over 50 public health occupations. For over 125 years, the APHA has been setting priorities and influencing public health policies affecting personal and environmental health, pollution control, programs and policies related to chronic and infectious diseases, and professional education in public health, amongst other issues including federal and state funding for health programs. The APHA mission is to improve public health for every American.

Dr. Degutis served two terms as Chair of the Executive Board of the APHA and is an active member of APHA’s Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section. She is the Director of the Yale Center for Public Health Preparedness, whose work focuses on educational strategies in the area of public health preparedness. Her current research activities focus on both clinical and policy interventions related to injury and substance abuse, as well as disaster preparedness. In addition, Dr. Degutis is the Research Director for the Section of Emergency Medicine and an associate clinical professor of nursing at Yale. She is a member of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Acute Care Research Agenda Steering Committee, and serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Agency-Wide Research Guide Development Core Team as co-chair of the Community Preparedness workgroup.

For further information on APHA, see www.apha.org