About Julie Shaffner
Julie Shaffner is a Career Epidemiology Field Officer from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assigned to the Tennessee Department of Health, where she has worked at the intersection of surveillance, epidemiology, and emergency preparedness and response since 2013. She has supported and led preparedness and response efforts for a wide range of public health responses, both within the state and internationally. With graduate degrees from Purdue University, she is passionate about applied epidemiology, process improvement, and collaborative approaches to outbreak response.
Why she’s nominated
As a CDC career epidemiology field officer assigned to the Tennessee Department of Health, Julie Shaffner has brought both technical rigor and a spirit of collaboration to her work with 7-1-7. By integrating 7-1-7 milestones into Tennessee’s statewide surveillance database, she has embedded timeliness and accountability into the infrastructure of the state’s outbreak response systems. Her retrospective review of outbreaks with 7-1-7 generated a rich evidence base for improvement—and her initiative in launching an outbreak improvement collaboration with the Nashville metro public health department shows a commitment to turning insights into action across jurisdictions.