Division Director
Dr. Stephanie R. Bialek, MD, MPH, is the director of the Division of Viral Diseases in CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), since 2020. Dr. Bialek, a captain in the United States Public Health Service, leads a division with 4 branches, 27 programs, and over 300 staff, fellows, and contractors.
During her career, Dr. Bialek has worked on a wide range of domestic and international public health programs. She joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1999 and worked in the Division of Viral Hepatitis. After completing the practicum year of her residency in Preventive Medicine at the Georgia Department of Public Health in 2003, Dr. Bialek returned to the Division of Viral Hepatitis as a medical epidemiologist working on hepatitis B vaccine effectiveness and chronic hepatitis B and C.
Until about a decade ago, receiving a diagnosis of hepatitis C was fraught with uncertainty and often a whole lot of worry. This dangerous and often silent viral infection causes inflammation of the liver that can lead to cirrhosis, scarring, liver cancer, and death. But thanks to exciting innovations in targeted treatment regimens that have come to market within the past five to eight years, the vast majority of cases of hep C (as it’s so often called) can now be cured yes, you read that right! meaning that lives are being saved.
This is not to say the disease should be taken lightly Hep C today can still be fatal. In 2018, more than 15,000 people died from it in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and that’s likely a low estimate, because many people do not get screened for the disease. (The CDC recommends that
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A Washington legislative committee heard testimony Wednesday on a bill that would allow businesses shuttered by the pandemic to partially reopen.
More than 1,600 people signed up to weign in on legislation that takes aim at Governor Inslee’s latest re-opening plan.
It would mandate moving the entire state from Phase One to Phase Two restrictions. That would allow many venues to serve customers indoors at 25% capacity.
Testimony before the Senate State Government & Elections Committee was held online. More than 16-hundred signed up to speak. Not all were heard, because of time restrictions. One of those was Blair McHaney, the president of the Washington Fitness Alliance.