Dr. Stephen Ostroff

Director, Bureau of Epidemiology
Pennsylvania Department of Health

In February 2007, Dr. Ostroff became director of the Bureau of Epidemiology of the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PADOH). Before this appointment, he had a 21-year career with the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), most of that time at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He retired from CDC in 2005, and before joining the PADOH worked in a newly created position in Honolulu with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) as the DHHS representative to the Pacific Islands, and as a consultant to the World Bank on public health projects in the South Asia region. Between 2002-2005, Dr. Ostroff was Assistant Surgeon General, USPHS, and during the same period, Deputy Director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), CDC. He was responsible for coordination of outbreak investigations performed by NCID scientists and emerging infectious diseases.

Born in Philadelphia PA, Dr. Ostroff graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1981 and completed residencies in internal medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (1984) and preventive medicine at the CDC (1988). He began his career with the USPHS as a National Health Service Corps assignee to Pohnpei, Micronesia, followed by completion of training in CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) in Seattle WA. He then worked in the Enteric Diseases Branch, the Division of Viral & Rickettsial Diseases, and the Respiratory Diseases Branch in NCID, before becoming NCID’s Associate Director for Epidemiologic Science from 1993-2002. Between 2002-2004, he was also Acting Director of CDC’s Select Agent Program. He has served as Dispatch Editor of CDC’s Emerging Infections Journal, special advisor to the President of the International Society for Travel Medicine (2001-2005), and President of the Department of Defense’s Armed Forces Epidemiology Board (2001-2005). He is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles, several book chapters on emerging infectious diseases, and has testified before Congress on a number of occasions. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, and a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America.