Leadership

The Council is led by a governance committee comprised of four representatives from The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

Erin Epson, MD

California Department of Health and CORHA: Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Representative

Dr. Epson is Medical Director and Chief of the Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) Program at the California Department of Health. She is clinically trained and board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases, and completed medical epidemiology training as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In her role with the CDPH HAI Program, Dr. Epson is responsible for ensuring the HAI Program fulfills its legislative mandates by interpreting HAI data reported by California hospitals, determining HAI and antimicrobial resistance (AR) prevention priorities, and publishing these data on an annual basis. Dr. Epson oversees HAI Program operations and communications, data management and epidemiologic analysis, investigation and response to HAI/AR outbreaks and infection control breaches, and facility- and regionally-based HAI/AR prevention initiatives.

Joseph Perz, DrPH, MA

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and CORHA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Representative

Dr. Joseph Perz currently serves as the Deputy Chief for Public Health Programs within the Prevention and Response Branch, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Perz entered the field of public health after training as an engineer and environmental scientist. After receiving a Doctorate in Public Health from Columbia University, he served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the Tennessee Department of Health. Since the early 2000s, Dr. Perz has worked at CDC headquarters, guiding dozens of outbreak investigations and special studies, drawing attention to the needs for injection safety and other basic infection control. He has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, MMWR articles and book chapters. His activities are currently focused on building support for health departments, fostering interagency collaboration, and promoting efforts to improve and expand prevention and response activities across all healthcare sectors.

Dawn Terashita, MD, MPH

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and CORHA: National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) Representative

Dr. Terashita currently serves as the Chief of the Healthcare Outreach Unit at the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health, Acute Communicable Disease Control Program. Dr. Terashita was educated at the New York Medical College and obtained her Masters of Public Health from Loma Linda University. Dr. Terashita is board certified in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine. She has supervised more than a hundred healthcare-associated outbreaks and authored and co-authored numerous related publications. She is Chair of the Los Angeles County Healthcare Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance Committee and is a member of the California Department of Public Health Healthcare Associated Infections Advisory Committee.

Natasha Bagdasarian, MD, MPH, FIDSA

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and CORHA: Association for State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) Representative

Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian is the Chief Medical Executive for the state of Michigan, and a cabinet member of the Governor, since 2021. She holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health. She has numerous publications on topics in infectious diseases and public health, including guidance on infection prevention and control of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Dr. Bagdasarian completed medical school at Wayne State University, internal medicine residency and infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Michigan, and she received her MPH in hospital and molecular epidemiology from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in both Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases and has been elected as a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. From 2015-2020 she served as the hospital epidemiologist at National University Health System in Singapore. She has consulted for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, providing technical guidance on outbreak preparedness and COVID-19; and for the American Society of Microbiology, advising on antimicrobial stewardship in Dhaka Bangladesh.