Annual TN Emerging Infections Program Scientific Presentation Day

Arthur Reingold, MD

Arthur Reingold is Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. He attended college and medical school at the University of Chicago and completed a residency in internal medicine at Mt Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After working for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years, he joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1987. The focus of his research is the prevention and control of infectious diseases in the US and in low- and middle-income countries around the world, particularly respiratory tract infections and vaccine preventable diseases. He has served as President of both the Society for Epidemiological Research and the American Epidemiological Society and currently serves as an associate editor of the journal Vaccine. He has served on diverse advisory committees, including the ACIP and the WHO SAGE vaccine advisory committees and as Chair of the Western States COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Committee, as well as on multiple committees of the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Medicine, to which he was elected to membership in 2003. He has served as Director or Co-Director of the CDC-funded California Emerging Infections Program since its inception in 1994.

Dr. Anna M. Behar

Dr. Behar is an epidemiologist with a background in AIDS-associated opportunistic infections and global health. After attaining her PhD from the University of Minnesota, Dr. Behar served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in New Mexico from 2021 to 2023, and currently works as an epidemiologist in the Division of HIV Prevention at the CDC.

Christine Thomas, DO, MPH

Christine Thomas, DO, MPH, is an infectious diseases physician and medical director for the HIV/STI/Viral Hepatitis Section and TB Elimination Program in the Division of Communicable and Environmental Diseases and Emergency Preparedness at the Tennessee Department of Health. She holds an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. Her professional aspirations include strengthening collaboration between healthcare and public health agencies to increase access to quality medical care in communities disproportionately affected by communicable diseases.

Mary-Margaret A. Fill, MD, MPH 

Dr. Mary-Margaret Fill serves as Deputy State Epidemiologist for the Tennessee Department of Health, sharing oversight of the Department’s communicable disease surveillance and outbreak response portfolio. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and minor in Security and Intelligence from The Ohio State University, a Master of Public Health degree from Vanderbilt University and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Mercer University School of Medicine. Dr. Fill completed dual-residency training in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and is board-certified in both specialties. Following residency, she served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a fellow in the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity program. Dr. Fill has been with the TN Department of Health since 2015, and has worked on foodborne, waterborne, zoonotic, vaccine-preventable and healthcare-associated disease outbreaks, emerging pathogens and emergency preparedness, and overarching strategy for communicable disease surveillance and informatics initiatives.  

Samantha Beaty, DVM

Samantha Beaty serves as the State Veterinarian and Assistant Commissioner for Animal Health. In that role, she works to protect animal agriculture through disease prevention, control and emergency disease outbreak preparedness. Dr. Beaty is a trained Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostician and has overseen Tennessee’s response to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Poultry during the outbreaks in commercial and backyard flocks.

Beaty joined the department in 2016, serving as a staff veterinarian implementing the livestock welfare program. In 2019 she was appointed as State Veterinarian.

Dr. Beaty graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture at Tennessee Technological University. She attended the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine, graduating in 2001. After graduation, she worked as a large animal field services intern at the University of Georgia. Upon her return to middle Tennessee Dr. Beaty worked in mixed animal practice and then transitioned to small animal practice until 2016. She is licensed to practice veterinary medicine in Tennessee.

Dr. Beaty resides on a cattle farm in Robertson County with her husband Michael Palmer and their daughter, two dogs and three cats.

S. Nicole Fehrenbach

S. Nicole Fehrenbach is the chief of the Rapid Response Research and Surveillance Branch (R3SB), in the National Center of Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), Division of Infectious Disease Readiness and Innovation (DIDRI). The branch works to rapidly respond to emerging infectious disease outbreaks by activating scientific investigation teams, existing infectious disease partners, and wastewater surveillance. Prior to joining NCEZID, Mrs. Fehrenbach was the deputy director of the Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders in the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

Mrs. Fehrenbach has served in numerous leadership roles at CDC for several public health emergency responses, including H1N1 influenza, Zika, COVID-19, Operation Allies Welcome, multinational mpox outbreak, Ebola, and Marburg. She led the State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support Task Force to coordinate technical assistance for US jurisdictions and has served as a section lead and management, budget, and operations lead. In these capacities, she has briefed the White House; congressional staff members; federal, state, and territorial public health leadership; and national partner organizations. She also managed billions of dollars in emergency funds through cooperative agreements and contracts. She has been integral to public health efforts aimed at reducing the impact of infectious disease outbreaks and emerging health threats on communities. Mrs. Fehrenbach brings together public health partners, federal agencies, state leadership, and local communities to address critical public health issues. By collaborating across systems, she believes that meaningful and sustainable change can occur.

Previously, Mrs. Fehrenbach worked with state and local health departments on critical public health informatics issues such as integrating public health information systems, analyzed health policy, and managed a large public health fellowship program. Mrs. Fehrenbach received her master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University (1995) and her bachelor’s degree in political science and quantitative business (1993) from Rosemont College. She completed her doctoral work in 2007 in the Joint PhD Program in Public Policy with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University, concentrating on health policy and information technology.

Stephany Cavallo, MPH

Steffany is currently the Director of the Sexually Transmitted Infections Program at the Tennessee Department of Health. In her role she provides oversight of all STI Prevention and Surveillance activities. She has worked as an epidemiologist for over 15 years at both the local and state level and has been with the Tennessee Department of Health for 9 years.

Natalie Thornburg, PhD

Natalie Thornburg serves as the chief of the Laboratory Branch in the Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Virus Division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Thornburg received an undergraduate degree in biology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg VA and a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC USA. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University Medical Center where she began her research in humoral immunity against respiratory syncytial virus and influenza viruses. Before joining CDC, she was a faculty instructor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and then an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University. 

Since joining CDC in 2016, Dr. Thornburg has focused on studying immunity against respiratory viruses after infection and / or vaccinations to assist in policy decisions about respiratory virus immunization recommendations and formulations. This work and studying immune escape lead her to viral genomics during the pandemic. In 2023, she transitioned from leading the respiratory virology and immunology laboratory to chief of the laboratory branch. She now leads multidisciplinary laboratories with expertise in detection, diagnostics, genomics, bioinformatics, virology and immunology. The branch focuses on many respiratory viruses including, but not limited to coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, adenoviruses, and rhinoviruses. 

Gabriel Najarro, PA-C

Gabriel Navarro am a Clinical and Research Informaticist with Emory Digital and have practiced as a Physician Assistant in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Emory University Hospital for the past 12 years. In addition, Gabriel serves as the Innovative Recruitment Strategies Lead with the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (Georgia CTSA), where Gabriel leads efforts to leverage electronic medical record (EMR)-based tools to enable research recruitment. My clinical practice and informatics work have allowed me to explore the intersection of healthcare delivery and data science, focusing on improving patient outcomes and advancing research initiatives.

At Emory Healthcare, Gabriel leads operations related to Epic Cosmos, enabling research access to the platform, spearheading pilot projects to demonstrate its utility, and organizing local user groups to optimize its use. Gabriel's expertise spans writing code in SQL and Python for data extraction and analysis from the raw Cosmos databases, supporting various projects that require complex data manipulation and statistical insights.

In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Gabriel has co-led two significant projects utilizing Cosmos: one exploring respiratory illnesses (COVID-19, influenza, and RSV), and another initiating a study on newborn screening. These projects highlight Cosmos' potential for large-scale public health research, addressing platform-specific challenges while leveraging its strengths. Additionally, through my role at the Georgia CTSA, Gabriel has worked to harness EMR-based recruitment tools to improve research participant engagement and study success.

Gabriel am passionate about applying innovative informatics solutions to epidemiology and public health. Gabriel looks forward to co-presenting on Epic Cosmos and its contributions to public health research during my upcoming lecture at the Tennessee Emerging Infections Program.

Elizabeth Sprouse, MPH

Elizabeth Sprouse is the founder of Double Lantern Informatics, a public health and clinical informatics firm committed to using technology to foster progress toward health and dignity to improve lives. She has served as adjunct public health informatics faculty at Emory University for the past several years, seeking to support the development of the public health workforce.  

Elizabeth has a longstanding relationship with Emory Healthcare and collaborates often with them on informatics efforts. This includes the Emory Healthcare-CDC collaboration to support the exploration of Cosmos data for public health purposes being discussed during this event. For the purposes of this discussion, she is representing Emory Healthcare.