Faculty Agenda

John J. Dreyzehner, MD, MPH, FACOEM, is an Occupational Health Physician. From 2019 to 2021, he served as the first permanent director of the CDC’s Center for Preparedness and Response, responsible for programs that comprised CDC’s public health preparedness and response portfolio, including direct support of the COVID-19 response. From 2011 to 2019, Dr. Dreyzehner served in the Tennessee Cabinet as the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health. In that time, he helped lead numerous policy, legislative, scientific, and community efforts to stem the use disorder epidemic and joined the Rx Summit’s Advisory Board in 2012. His journey into the public health impacts of the substance use epidemic began when he served from 2002 to 2011 as health district director for multiple counties in the Appalachian region of Virginia. There, he helped identify and describe the opioid epidemic in public health terms, helped form and lead several community and regional coalitions, and became a DATA-waived physician, providing use disorder care in a local non-profit community clinic. Dr. Dreyzehner began his health career as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force. Following his military service, he was residency-trained and board-certified in Occupational Medicine and practiced clinically in that field before turning full-time to population health. He is married to his medical school sweetheart, a child psychiatrist, with whom he has two grown children and grandchildren.