Matthew Penn, JD, MLIS
Director, Public Health Law Program
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Matthew Penn is the Director of CDC Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support’s Public Health Law Program (PHLP). In his role as PHLP Director, he leads a team of legal analysts responsible for the agency’s efforts in legal epidemiology and workforce development to support the understanding and use of law as a public health tool at the state, tribal, local, and territorial levels. Mr. Penn and colleagues have been shaping new directions for the public health law community with a new book, The New Public Health Law: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Practice and Advocacy (Oxford 2018), and research and publications including Better Health Faster: The Five Essential Public Health Law Services; Policy Surveillance: A Vital Public Health Practice Comes of Age; and A Transdisciplinary Approach to Public Health Law: The Emerging Practice of Legal Epidemiology. Prior to entering federal service he was a Staff Attorney serving South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control as an advising and litigation attorney with extensive experience in the areas of emergency preparedness, disease control, and environmental health, a Staff Attorney with the Supreme Court of South Carolina, and a legal writing instructor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law.
