Speaker

Charlene Wong, MD MSHP serves as the Senior Advisor for Health Strategy in the Office of the Director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this role, she is coordinating a collaborative approach to protecting health that brings public health alongside efforts in health care and social supports.  This work spans CDC’s priority areas of supporting young families, mental health and overdose, and readiness and response.  She previously served as the inaugural Assistant Secretary for Children and Families and the Chief Health Policy Officer for COVID-19 in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS). Dr. Wong was faculty at Duke University and served as the Executive Director of North Carolina Integrated Care for Kids (NC InCK), an innovative model serving ~100,000 Medicaid-insured children in central North Carolina.  She is a primary care pediatrician, specializing in adolescent and young adult medicine. She completed her medical, research and policy training at Emory University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, University of Washington, and University of Pennsylvania.