CDC Foundation Names Lauren A. Smith to New Role Leading Health Equity and Strategy

The CDC Foundation today announced the creation of a new role, Chief Health Equity and Strategy Officer, and that Lauren A. Smith, MD, MPH, is joining the Foundation in this capacity. In this role, Smith will partner with the Foundation’s other senior leaders to develop and drive strategic efforts to embed health equity across the CDC Foundation’s COVID-19 response activities with an explicit focus on addressing systemic racism and its impact on the ability for vulnerable populations to be resilient amidst the pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has in real time laid bare health inequities that have been with us across our history,” said Judy Monroe, MD, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation. “While nearly all of Foundation’s public health programs have a health equity component, it is vital that we are purposeful and strategic in how we evaluate and address health equity across our organization. I am pleased that Lauren is joining us, and I know that our team, our programs and the people we serve will greatly benefit from the expertise and experience she has gained during her more than 25 years working at the intersection of the health care delivery and management, public policy and public health fields.”

In her new role starting October 19, Smith will also lead activities to build organizational capacity to integrate health equity into the foundation’s practice, process, action, innovation, and organizational performance to elevate the importance of and sustain the foundation’s health equity efforts. She will report directly to Monroe and serve as a member of the CDC Foundation’s Executive Team. Smith will also serve as a principal advisor to the Board of Directors, the CEO and the Executive Team on the foundation’s overall strategic opportunities, risks and tradeoffs related to health equity strategy and implementation.

Smith joins the CDC Foundation from FSG, one of the world’s leading social impact consulting firms, where she served as co-CEO and led the firm’s U.S. health practice. At FSG, she helped drive the vision and growth of the firm to advance its mission of achieving equitable social impact at scale. In this role, she advised foundation leaders, staff and partnered with community and social sector leaders.

Her previous leadership roles have included serving as the medical director and then interim commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the senior strategic advisor for a 50-state, federally-funded innovation and improvement network focused on reducing infant mortality, the national medical director of the Medical Legal Partnership for Children and the medical director of the pediatric inpatient service at Boston Medical Center, where she was on faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.

Her experience in federal and state government includes roles as a policy analyst in the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as a W.T. Grant Health Policy Fellow in the office of the Massachusetts Speaker of the House.

Smith holds a BA with honors in biology from Harvard College, an MD from University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and an MPH from University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. She completed her pediatrics residency and chief residency at Children’s Hospital Boston and her general pediatrics fellowship at Boston Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics.