State Health Officer Names Dr. Lovetta Brown Interim State Epidemiologist

November 3, 2006 — Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Brian Amy has named Lovetta Brown, MD, MPH, as interim State Epidemiologist at the Mississippi Department of Health (MDH).

Dr. Brown is presently the Medical Director for MDH's Office of Health Disparity Elimination. Currently, the Mississippi Department of Health is conducting a national search to fill the position of State Epidemiologist.

Dr. Brown has been employed with MDH for 21 years. She has served 18 years as a medical provider in northeast Mississippi county health department clinics, nine years as District Health Officer for Northwest Public Health District I, and three years as Medical Director of Health Disparity Elimination.

"Dr. Brown is undoubtedly a great choice for interim State Epidemiologist because she is uniquely qualified, well-versed in public health and possesses many years of experience in dealing with communicable disease outbreaks and disease surveillance," said Dr. Amy.

Dr. Brown received her medical degree in 1981 from the Medical College of Wisconsin and her Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, where she focused her studies in both Health Policy and Planning and Epidemiology. She also was an internal medicine resident at the Medical College of Wisconsin for two years and at Meharry College for one year. During her tenure at MDH, Dr. Brown has completed Certified Public Manager certification through the State Personnel Board.

"I am looking forward to practicing public health in this position and will continue to provide protection and prevention of communicable and other diseases in Mississippi," said Dr. Brown. "Public health is population-based, so my overall goal is to protect the health of all Mississippians."

As interim State Epidemiologist, Dr. Brown will be charged with working with District Health Officers throughout the state in monitoring surveillance of communicable diseases such as mumps, measles, West Nile virus and many other diseases.

Dr. Brown recalls dealing with several disease outbreaks in northeast Mississippi during her tenure as that area's District Health Officer.

"When I became District Health Officer in 1994, my first experience with a disease outbreak was when we had a meningitis outbreak in 1994 in the Horn Lake school district," said Dr. Brown. "We have also dealt with a Hepatitis A outbreak in north Mississippi in which we launched a handwashing campaign and immunized all Tunica County residents ages two to 35."

"Together as a team in north Mississippi, the public health workforce was able to face and handle disease outbreaks that impacted our area," said Dr. Brown. "In 2003, we had six cases of meningitis in one hospital and our public health team was capable of vaccinating over 6,500 school students in the entire Horn Lake school system. Not one person died, and it took the valiant efforts of the public health staff from across the state and the school system to make that happen."

"I am very confident that our public health team will work together to protect the health of all Mississippians," said Dr. Brown.

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