Jennifer Welham named a health executive to watch

For more than three decades, Jennifer Welham has championed the value of using research and data to make decisions that protect and improve people’s health and well-being. “I’ve spent my entire career helping clients understand and leverage scientific research to make decisions that protect and improve public health,” she says.

As the leader of our public health and social programs division, Jennifer's team provides research, analytics, training, technical assistance, and evaluation services to help clients and the public make informed and life-changing public health decisions.

Her leadership has caught the attention of WashingtonExec, garnering her a spot on their Top Healthcare Execs to Watch list in 2021 and 2022. And the winner of their 2021 Pinnacle Award in the Healthcare Industry Executive of the Year, Public Company category.

“It’s an exciting time to be in public health. We have the opportunity to make a meaningful and lasting impact on society as we emerge from the pandemic, address recovery challenges, and assess lessons learned to improve our public health infrastructure.” — Jennifer Welham

Today's public health challenges are complex and often interconnected. The combination of our deep public health expertise and our digital transformation chops allows us to take an interdisciplinary approach to create breakthrough solutions. We're helping clients modernize outdated public health systems. And the result is better access to real-time information that researchers, health providers, and the public can use to monitor disease outbreaks and address other timely health priorities.

And facing a challenge like no other, Jennifer’s team brought their skills to the forefront to provide critical support to government clients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

We created the National Institutes of Health website for COVID-19 treatment guidelines, giving doctors easy access to patient care information.

We provided data for the U.S. Agency for International Development to help developing countries improve their diagnostic and surveillance mechanisms to detect and monitor infectious diseases. We also provided emergency response support for COVID-19 testing.

And we continue to manage BioSense—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's cloud-based platform for nationwide syndromic surveillance—to monitor and respond to disease, addiction, and other hazardous conditions, including COVID-19.

But Jennifer acknowledges “there’s much to be done outside the realm of infectious disease.” With U.S. drug overdoses at the highest levels ever recorded. The health-related impacts of climate change coming to light, as evidenced by the extreme heat and fires in Pacific Northwest. And the severe health disparities faced by vulnerable and underserved populations. Our public health professionals remain at the forefront in all of these areas and more.

"I'm honored and proud to lead a group of professionals that do so much to protect and improve the health and well-being of people and their communities."

Read more about Jennifer's key achievements and thoughts on the future of public health in her WashingtonExec Pinnacle Finalist interview.