Frederic Elijah Shaw

Frederic Shaw is a public health physician who has spent his career in communicable disease control, applied epidemiology, science administration, law, and medical editing. He retired from full-time federal service in 2019 after 36 years working in public health. In his last five years of full-time service, he worked as the Editor in Chief of Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Public Health Service and the Surgeon General, and as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Director, Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After retirement from full-time work, he has served as a contract associate editor of the CDC journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, and as an Associate Editor of Public Health Reports.

Dr. Shaw was born and reared in New Hampshire. After finishing training in internal medicine at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, New York, and the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont in Burlington, he served for three years as medical director of a startup community health center in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He began his public health career in 1983 as a medical officer in CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and staff epidemiologist in CDC’s Hepatitis Branch, National Center for Infectious Diseases. Subsequently, he served as the State Epidemiologist in New Hampshire and Assistant Health Commissioner for Policy and Planning at the Texas Department of Health. In the 1990s, he served as Staff Counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and later as a private consultant to the health care and vaccine manufacturing industries. In 1992, he helped found the New Hampshire Public Health Association and served as its first president. He returned to CDC in 2001 and served in a variety of positions in communicable disease control, surveillance and informatics, public health law, and, for four years, as Editor in Chief of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). He has contributed to about 50 published journal articles and book chapters. He is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of New Hampshire and holds a medical doctorate from the University of Vermont College of Medicine and a law degree from Columbia University. He is board-certified in internal medicine and preventive medicine and is a member of the New Hampshire Bar. In recent times, his interests have centered on medical writing, editing, and publishing.

Dr. Shaw began his association with Emory in 1984, when he served for three years as a Clinical Instructor in Medicine. From 2008 to 2023, he taught the annual Rollins course, “Public Health Law” as Adjunct Professor of Health Policy & Management, and he served for several years as a member of the Rollins Faculty Council. In 2013, he won the department’s Outstanding Adjunct Award. For the past few years, he has remained connected to the Emory Department of Health Policy & Management through various special projects, and he serves as one of the Rollins representative to the Emory University Conflict of Interest Committee.

He has 2 children and 1 grandchild and lives in Atlanta with his wife, Judy Kruger, PhD. She retired from a career in epidemiology and emergency management at CDC and FEMA and serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Rollins in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health, where she teaches the annual course on complex disaster management.