Karen Hacker, MD, MPH, is the Director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, where she oversees more than 1,000 staff dedicated to preventing chronic diseases and promoting health across the life span. Since her appointment, she has overseen the community health worker and social determinant of health accelerator plan initiatives. She oversees a broad portfolio that includes Maternal Mortality, School health, obesity prevention, smoking policies and the leading chronic diseases. 

Dr. Hacker has a long history of public health practice at the local level having served as the Director of the Allegheny County Health Department in Pennsylvania for 6 years. She also held a variety of leadership roles at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts, including her role as the Senior Medical Director for Public and Community Health. 

Dr. Hacker has published extensively and is an expert in community-based participatory research (CBPR). She served as the Director of the CBPR program of the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Award Initiative and wrote Community-Based Participatory Action Research, a widely used academic text. 

Dr. Hacker received her MD from Northwestern University School of Medicine and her MPH with Honors from Boston University School of Public Health and continues to see patients as a primary care physician in adolescent medicine. 

Physician turned broadcast journalist, Norman has spent 40 years with the ABC, hosting Radio Nationals Health Report and as commentator for 7.30, Midday, News Breakfast and Four Corners.  

More recently, Norman became Australia’s most trusted voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, as co-host of the Coronacast podcast. He has authored to best selling books So You Think You Know What’s Good for You and So You Want to Live Younger Longer, with a third to be released this year. 

Norman is the Co-Founder of Tonic Media Network, whose mission is to deliver better health outcomes through patient activation at point of care. 

Dr John Gerrard has been Queensland’s Chief Health Officer since Decemeber 2021.  

Dr Gerrard completed his medical and specialist training in Sydney and London between 1980 and 1993, quickly becoming one of Australia’s leading infectious disease specialists. As a young doctor in 1993, Dr Gerrard rewrote Australia’s medical history by identifying the country’s earliest known case of AIDS.  

Dr Gerrard moved to the Gold Coast in 1994 to take up the post of Director of Infectious Diseases at the Gold Coast Hospital. Like many other Australians, he first visited Queensland for Expo 88 and immediately fell in love with it.  

Throughout his time on the Gold Coast he developed in international reputation for research in emerging infectious diseases and an organism called “Heterorhabditis Gerradi” that glows in the dark, was named in his honour by American researchers in 2009. He is the only living Australian with a human pathogen named after him.  

In 2014, he travelled to Sierra Leone during the West African Ebola epidemic. There, he formed part of a team that established Australia’s first Ebola Treatment Centre outside Freetown.  

During the COVID pandemic, Dr Gerrard managed Queensland’ first cases from Wuhan, China in January 2020. Shortly after, he travelled to Tokyo a part of a mission to assist Japanese authorities in containing the outbreak of COVID-19 aboard the Diamond Princess.  

In April 2021, Dr Gerrard travelled to the Dutch Antilles as part of a Dutch-sponsored mission where he first experienced the full impact of COVID-19.  

Shortly after his return, he took on the role of Chief Health Officer.