Jennifer Layden

Layden earned a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame, graduating cum laude in 1996. From 1992 to 1994, she was a member of the varsity women's basketball team.^[1] She later attended the University of Illinois Chicago, where she completed a M.D. in 2005 and a Ph.D. in epidemiology in 2005.^[1] She completed post-graduate training at the same institution, serving as an intern and resident in medicine from 2005 to 2007 and as a fellow in infectious diseases from 2007 to 2010.^[1]

Layden began her career in academia.^[1] She was an assistant professor of medicine and public health at the University of Illinois Chicago from 2010 to 2012, followed by a position as assistant professor of public health and medicine at Loyola University Chicago from 2012 to 2016.^[1] She later became an associate professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago, a role she held from 2016 to 2020.^[1]

In June 2016, Layden was appointed state epidemiologist and chief medical officer (CMO) for the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), where she served until January 2020.^[1] Her responsibilities included directing outbreak responses, overseeing disease surveillance efforts, and providing scientific and clinical leadership for the state.^[1] During her tenure, she managed public health responses to outbreaks of EVALI, Hepatitis A, and measles.^[1]

In January 2020, Layden became the deputy commissioner and CMO for the Chicago Department of Public Health.^[1] She was the incident manager for the city's COVID-19 response.^[2][1] At the start of the pandemic, she addressed data management challenges, as many healthcare facilities were reporting cases via fax and Microsoft Excel files.^[2][1] To streamline this process, Layden authored a public health order that defined essential data elements for COVID-19 and mandated their electronic submission in standard formats.^[2] In collaboration with Rush University Medical Center, her department established a cloud-based hub to receive this data electronically.^[2] She also led the creation of the city's first "Datahub," a platform designed to enable automated electronic data submission from healthcare providers and laboratories.^[1] Layden left this position in September 2020.^[2][1]

Layden joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in September 2020, initially in the Office of Science to help lead the agency's COVID-19 response.^[2][3] Shortly after her arrival, she co-led a vaccine task force that oversaw COVID-19 vaccine data and contributed to clinical guidance decisions.^[3][1] Her deployment with the task force lasted from June to October 2021.^[1]

Layden held leadership roles at the agency, including associate deputy director to the deputy director for public health science and surveillance from December 2020 to November 2022.^[1] She was named acting director of the newly established Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology (OPHDST) in November 2022 and was formally appointed director in August 2023.^[1]

As director, she led the CDC's Data Modernization Initiative (DMI), which was established in 2019 to address the nation's underfunded and antiquated public health data systems.^[2][1] These systems were often characterized by siloed databases and a reliance on outdated methods like faxes.^[2] Layden described public health data funding as following a "boom-and-bust pattern," where funding increases during a crisis and disappears after the threat subsides.^[2] She also highlighted how disease-specific funding has led to fragmented data collection, citing an analysis that found jurisdictions had to report data for 11 notifiable diseases to multiple systems.^[2] A key component of her work was a plan known as HTI-2, or Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability.^[1] She identified sustained funding as the most significant obstacle to modernizing the public health data infrastructure.^[2]

On August 27, 2025, it was reported that Layden was departing the CDC after approximately five years with the agency.^[3]