Matthew  Penn

Matthew Penn is an adjunct professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, teaching public health law and legal epidemiology. Mr. Penn and colleagues have been shaping new directions for the public health law community with the book, The New Public Health Law: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Practice and Advocacy, 2ed. (Oxford 2022), and research and publications including Public Health Strategies: A Pathway for Public Health Practice to Leverage Law in Advancing Equity; Better Health Faster: The Five Essential Public Health Law Services; Policy Surveillance: A Vital Public Health Practice Comes of Age; and A Transdisciplinary Approach to Public Health Law: The Emerging Practice of Legal Epidemiology.  Matthew Penn is also the Director of CDC’s National Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce, Office of Public Health Law Services (OPHLS).  In his role as OPHLS Director, he leads a team of legal and public health analysts responsible for the agency’s efforts in legal epidemiology and workforce development to build and support the understanding and use of law as a public health tool at the state, tribal, local, and territorial levels.  Prior to entering federal service, he was a Staff Attorney serving South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control as an advising and litigation attorney with extensive experience in the areas of emergency preparedness, disease control, and environmental health, a Staff Attorney with the Supreme Court of South Carolina, and a legal writing instructor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law. He received his law degree with honors from the University of South Carolina, his master of library and information science from the University of South Carolina, and his undergraduate in English from the University of Georgia.