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Meredith Allen, DrPH, MS, is the vice president of health security at ASTHO. Allen directs the programmatic designed to address environmental health, preparedness, immunization, and infectious disease policy and program needs of state and territorial health officials and their program staff. Allen received her doctorate from Drexel University and her master’s degree in Epidemiology from Harvard University...

Andy Baker-White brings over 20 years of legal and public health experience to ASTHO. He currently serves as senior director of state health policy. In this role, Baker-White supports state and territorial health agencies in advancing sound public health policy by overseeing the tracking, analysis, and dissemination of legislative and regulatory trends, responding to requests for legal technical assistance, conducting legal research and analysis, and collaborating with ASTHO’s programmatic teams and partners...

Joseph M. Kanter, MD, MPH, is a dynamic and experienced public health leader with a wealth of expertise in public health promotion, state and local governmental administration, and health advocacy. He assumed the role of ASTHO's CEO in the spring of 2024 with an agenda to advance the organization’s mission of providing essential support to state and territorial health departments, ensuring the vitality of public health programs and workforce, and championing polices that enable optimal health for all....

J.T. Lane, MPH, serves as the senior vice president for population health and innovation at ASTHO. In his role, Lane oversees a team and portfolio of programs focused on state and territorial efforts around ending the HIV epidemic, public health data modernization, public health system research and business intelligence, rural health, primary care, and health system integration, as well as Medicaid and health plan engagements. He also leads cross-cutting innovation planning and social determinants of health strategies that are inclusive of all major public and private business sectors...

Ali Maffey joined ASTHO in early 2023 as the Vice President of Social and Behavioral Health. Her portfolio includes substance use disorder and overdose prevention, mental health promotion, and preventing violence, firearm injury, suicide, and adverse childhood experiences. Ali came to ASTHO after 10 years in the Violence and Injury Prevention - Mental Health Promotion Branch of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) where she oversaw the work of the statewide youth health survey...

Carolyn Mullen joined ASTHO in 2017 with 15 years of experience as a government relations professional. As senior vice president for government affairs and public relations, she leads the federal government relations, communications, public relations, and state health policy teams. During the COVID-19 global pandemic, Mullen oversaw public relations strategies that resulted in placement in 70,000 news publications, 125 billion media impressions, and over $150 billion in emergency secured supplemental funding for public health...

Marcus Plescia, MD, MPH, is the chief medical officer for ASTHO. He provides medical leadership and expertise across the agency and has served as ASTHO’s principal spokesperson during the COVID-19 pandemic. He leads the ASTHO Atlanta office and serves as the association’s primary liaison to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Plescia has also served in public health leadership roles at the local, state, and federal level in North Carolina and at CDC...

Danny Staley, Senior Vice President for Public Health Programs and Practice brings more than 30 years of public health leadership and experience serving as local health director and state health official in North Carolina. In 2018, Staley joined ASTHO to lead hurricane recovery projects in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Danny oversees and guides working with ASTHO’s many federal and nonprofit partners, which includes providing technical assistance and support to states and island jurisdictions on health equity...

As a public health physician, Kimberlee Wyche-Etheridge, MD, MPH, has a life-long commitment to improving the quality, access, and acceptability of care for under-resourced families, and to changing the systems that perpetuate health inequities. She has worked to alter clinical practice by teaching medical students and graduate students to practice culturally and economically competent primary care and public health...