The CDC Leaders

"I see health marketing as creating, communicating, and delivering science-based health information to and from customers and partners in ways that benefit the customers' and the public's health."

- Jay M. Bernhardt, PhD, MPH

Jay M. Bernhardt, PhD, MPH

Director, National Center for Health Marketing

Jay Bernhardt, PhD, MPH, serves-in his first position at CDC-as the director of the National Center for Health Marketing. Prior to coming to CDC, Dr. Bernhardt was an assistant professor and the founding director of the Center for Public Health Communications at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, and before that was an assistant professor at the University of Georgia.

He graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in sociology and a minor in computer science and was hired as a health educator and media campaign coordinator in the Office of Sexual Assault Services, in the Rutgers University Student Health Service. He received his MPH degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and his PhD from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Doctor Bernhardt's passion is mentoring students and he was an original founder of the National Public Health Student Caucus of the American Public Health Association (APHA), now the Student Assembly of APHA.