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In her new role, Peterson will oversee all of AmeriCares health programs, including the delivery of more than $500 million in medical aid and relief supplies annually in response to devastating disasters and the everyday emergencies caused by chronic poverty. She will direct the AmeriCares Emergency Response Team, oversee programs improving health care in underresourced settings and guide AmeriCares work with the uninsured in the U.S.
“My life’s mission has been to improve global health in the most challenging settings. Working with AmeriCares, I can improve health care for disaster survivors and families in crisis,” said Peterson. “My hope is to better prepare public health practitioners so they can address the next major health emergency.”
Peterson brings to AmeriCares decades of experience in both domestic and international health policy, clinical care, administration and disaster response. A decisive voice in global health policy, she was appointed assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Health Bureau by President George W. Bush.
From 2001-05, Peterson had oversight of all of USAID’s programs in maternal and child health, AIDS, family planning, neglected tropical diseases and health systems. She helped guide the U.S. government’s international health policies, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and served on a number of international boards of directors such as the Global Fund, GAVI, Stop TB and the Child Survival Partnership. A former director of World Vision International’s global health center and executive health policy and advocacy adviser, she led efforts to refocus health programs for the world’s largest international nongovernmental organization.
She also spent nearly six years in Sub-Saharan Africa working on community development, public health training and AIDS prevention programs in Kenya and Zimbabwe. She has worked as a consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization in Haiti and Brazil. Peterson also served as Virginia state health commissioner and led the state’s response to 9/11 and anthrax threats. In the aftermath of the Southeast Asia tsunami, she served as a liaison between the U.S. Department of Defense, the United Nations and NGOs in Indonesia. She has also performed health assessments and disaster response work in Afghanistan and West Africa, where she recently worked on the Ebola outbreak.
Most recently, she served as public health program director for the Ponce School of Medicine & Health Services in Puerto Rico and as a research professor at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Peterson earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Washington and her medical degree from Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn. She completed her master’s degree in public health and preventive medicine residency at Emory University in Atlanta.
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