Executive Leadership & Expert Bios

Charles Helmick, MD

Medical Epidemiologist, Arthritis Program, Division of Adult and Community Health, NCCDPHP

 

Charles (Chad) Helmick, MD, is the scientific lead for the Arthritis Program at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. His responsibilities include directing the team′s scientific staff and resources to implement the surveillance, epidemiology, and prevention research strategies laid out in the National Arthritis Action Plan and help reach Healthy People 2010 objectives for arthritis.

Dr. Helmick has nearly 29 years of experience in public health, working first on infectious disease issues as part of the Epidemic Intelligence Service training program at CDC, then on international public health issues at the Sierra Leone Caribbean Epidemiology Centre. He has spent the past 24 years at CDC working on chronic disease problems, including multiple sclerosis, digestive diseases, and especially those related to aging such as osteoporosis and vitamin B12 deficiency.

Dr. Helmick has focused on raising awareness of arthritis as a public health issue, helping to generate data showing arthritis to be a major problem among all demographic groups, standardizing surveillance approaches to arthritis in national and state surveys, and highlighting the value of existing interventions. He helped write the National Arthritis Action Plan-A Public Health Strategy and is a Workgroup Coordinator as well as author of the first-ever Healthy People 2010 arthritis objectives. He also provides technical support to CDC-funded state arthritis programs and extramural research activities, such as the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project, a long-term study of hip and knee osteoarthritis.

Dr. Helmick received his BS in Zoology from the University of Michigan and MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He has authored or co-authored over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has received several awards for scientific work in public health and government service.

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