DEIAB Officer

Role at CDC

Ms. Blackwell is the diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB) officer in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP). She oversees the center's efforts to develop and support an empowered and high-performing workforce that thrives in a culture of mutual acceptance and trust, where every employee recognizes and embraces our differences and experiences satisfaction, inclusion, and belonging. Ms. Blackwell also serves as the co-chair of NCCDPHP's DEIAB Council.

Previous experience

Ms. Blackwell previously served as a public health advisor in the Program Development and Services Branch of NCCDPHP's Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) and oversaw DASH's DEIAB/Health Equity Workgroup. From 2012 to 2023, while serving in the School Health Branch of the Division of Population Health (DPH), Ms. Blackwell developed and led DPH's DEIAB/Health Equity Workgroup. She also represented DPH in the center's Tribal Coordination Workgroup and was a liaison to the Healthy Tribes Unit and the American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian Coalition.

Before joining CDC, Ms. Blackwell was a public health program manager for the Health Assessment and Promotion Division of the DeKalb County Board of Health, where she developed and managed the division's Office of Chronic Disease Prevention unit. From those early days of her career, she managed federal, state, and corporate funded public health programs that focused on health equity and chronic disease prevention.

Bildung

Ms. Blackwell received her MPH from Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. She completed a certificate from Cornell University's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program in 2023.