Dr. Burkholder has 30 years public health work experience in 25 countries in a wide variety of settings, including involvement at global, regional, national, and sub-national levels focusing on immunization programs and vaccine preventable disease control.
Dr. Burkholder received both his Master’s in public health policy and Medical Degree from the University of North Carolina. After completing residency training in Family Medicine in 1991, he joined the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer in the US Public Health Service. During his 20+ year career at the CDC, Dr. Burkholder primarily worked in international public health programs, including complex emergency response and global immunization.
From 2000-2005 he was seconded to WHO’s South-east Asia Regional Office in New Delhi, India as the Regional Advisor for Immunization and Vaccine Development with responsibility for managing WHO’s vaccine preventable disease programs (particularly polio and measles) in 11 countries. He returned to the CDC to serve as Director of the Global Immunization Division (GID) from 2006-2011. From 2011-13 he re-joined WHO to serve as team lead for communicable disease control in Thailand and the Greater Mekong Sub-region.
From 2014-2021 Dr. Burkholder continued working part time as an independent advisor on global immunization with WHO and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). His work included developing endgame strategies for polio eradication and contributing to technical guidelines for the global introduction of COVID vaccines.
