German Gonzalez

Dr. German Gonzalez is taking a sabbatical from sole US public health practice, to develop and deliver social medicine in rural areas overseas. Previously, Dr. Gonzalez worked at the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council (GLITC) as the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center Director and Medical Epidemiologist, where he is responsible for planning and implementing technical assistance, public health practice, research and epidemiological support services to Tribes and urban Native American health programs in a three-state region (Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan). Dr. Gonzalez came from the Georgia Department of Health (GDPH) where he served as Medical Epidemiologist and Director of the Office of Epidemiology for the Fulton County Board of Health. Previously, Dr. Gonzalez was at the Florida Department of Health as the Health Executive Medical Director, Bureau of Epidemiology, Division of Disease Control and Health Protection and had direct oversee of the Infectious Disease Prevention and Investigations (IDP&I) Section operations. In this role, Dr. Gonzalez did oversee the acute disease team, food and water disease program, vector-borne and zoonotic program, healthcare-associated infection program, the FL Epidemiology Intelligence Service Fellowship (FL EIS), and served as senior medical epidemiologist as well. Previously, he was the Disease Response and Control Manager / Senior Epidemiologist for the Whatcom County Health Department in Bellingham, WA for three years, and the Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Unit Director and Medical Epidemiologist for the North Central Health District for over nine years. Dr. Gonzalez earned his medical degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In addition, he received a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Health Care Outcomes Management, from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Dr. Gonzalez was directly involved with research and deployment of syndromic surveillance while in central GA; Dr. Gonzalez has extensively reached the healthcare community within and outside his jurisdiction. Moreover, Dr. Gonzalez has successfully joined teams with emergency responders, law enforcement, and civic groups promoting public health and providing a dependable source of support and information for these nontraditional community partners.
Dr. Gonzalez has been actively involved in the infection control field; he worked with the Georgia Infection Prevention Network as Public Health Liaison for the board of directors, and served as consultant for ICPs across GA. In addition, Dr. Gonzalez has promoted the advance of public health informatics at different levels, as public health practitioner and doctoral level professor of health and public health informatics at Walden University and through his participation in several different groups and workgroups at national level. In 2015 Dr. Gonzalez was advanced to the rank of Fellow at the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Gonzalez has served as Official member of the Public Health Information Network (PHIN) – InfoLinks CoP, official CoP Council (CoPC) member. NACCHO’s Public Health Informatics and Biosurveilance workgroups and BioSense Governance Group. Dr. Gonzalez served as a member of the ePublic Health Informatics Workgroup (as SME) at NACCHO, and since August 2017, as the NACCHO representative at International Network for Epidemiology in Policy - INEP (formerly known as The International Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology [JPC-SE]) until he moved to the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center.

Courses Taught

PUBH 8270 - Health Informatics and Surveillance

PUBH 8130 - Communications, Marketing, and Public Relations for Public Health Leaders

PUBH 9001 - Dissertation

PUBH 8135 - Leadership, Professionalism, and Ethics in Public Health Practice

HINF 6220 - Leadership, Organizational Behavior and Change Management

MMHA 6100 - U.S. Health Care Delivery System

Education

MD, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

MPH, RSPH- Emory University

Awards / Honors

Fellow American College of Epidemiology, , 2015

2009 Sellers-McCroan Award for Outstanding Leaders, , 2009