Jennifer E. Layden

Jennifer E. Layden is an American physician, epidemiologist, and public health official. She has worked on public health data modernization, particularly as the director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology (OPHDST) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the CDC, she led the agency's Data Modernization Initiative (DMI). Before her federal service, she held senior public health roles in Illinois, including state epidemiologist and chief medical officer (CMO) for the Illinois Department of Public Health. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she was the deputy commissioner and CMO for the Chicago Department of Public Health. Layden departed the CDC in August 2025.

Education Layden earned a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame, graduating cum laude in 1996. From 1992 to 1994, she was a member of the varsity women's basketball team. She later attended the University of Illinois Chicago, where she completed a M.D. in 2005 and a Ph.D. in epidemiology in 2005. Shortly after her arrival, she co-led a vaccine task force that oversaw COVID-19 vaccine data and contributed to clinical guidance decisions. Her deployment with the task force lasted from June to October 2021.

Layden held leadership roles at the agency, including associate deputy director to the deputy director for public health science and surveillance from December 2020 to November 2022. She was named acting director of the newly established Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology (OPHDST) in November 2022 and was formally appointed director in August 2023.

As director, she led the CDC's Data Modernization Initiative (DMI), which was established in 2019 to address the nation's underfunded and antiquated public health data systems. These systems were often characterized by siloed databases and a reliance on outdated methods like faxes. Layden described public health data funding as following a "boom-and-bust pattern," where funding increases during a crisis and disappears after the threat subsides. She also highlighted how disease-specific funding has led to fragmented data collection, citing an analysis that found jurisdictions had to report data for 11 notifiable diseases to multiple systems. A key component of her work was a plan known as HTI-2, or Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability. She identified sustained funding as the most significant obstacle to modernizing the public health data infrastructure.

On August 27, 2025, it was reported that Layden was departing the CDC after approximately five years with the agency.