CAPT Joshua G Schier, MD MPH was appointed the 9th Chief Professional Officer of the Medical Category of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (Corps) in November 2021. As the Chief Medical Officer, CAPT Schier provides leadership and direction for Corps medical officers and advises the Office of the Surgeon General and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on recruitment, assignment, deployment, retention, and career development of Corps physicians.

CAPT Schier is currently assigned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Overdose Prevention as a Senior Medical Officer. At CDC, he serves as a Strategy Lead for CDC’s Overdose Data to Action Program overseeing activities related to linking overdose patients to care and supporting providers and health systems across 66 states, counties, and metropolitan areas. He is the CDC/ATSDR Site Director for the joint Emory/CDC Medical Toxicology Fellowship which trains physicians who have already completed a primary residency in the sub-specialty of Medical Toxicology. Finally, he serves as a subject matter expert in Medical Toxicology for informing various activities related to stimulants and other drugs of abuse. He served two terms on the American Board of Emergency Medicine’s (ABEM) Medical Toxicology Sub-Board as one of 8 physicians charged with helping ABEM maintain and improve the Medical Toxicology board certification and re-certification practices, procedures and policies and served as the Board Chair during his last term.

Before joining NCEH, CAPT Schier spent 15 years at CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, whereas a Medical Officer, and ultimately Lead of the Environmental Toxicology Team, he oversaw national real-time surveillance activities for poisoning events via poison control center data, radiation disaster preparedness activities, and provided expert clinical consultation for suspected and known domestic and international mass poisoning incidents. Some of the more prominent incidents that CAPT Schier deployed for and/or supported from Atlanta included illness and mass poisonings related to electronic cigarette and vaping in the US, diethylene glycol in Panama, sodium bromide poisoning in Angola, litchi-associated illness among children in India, metal exposure among children in Peru, typhoid in Malawi and more than 100 other incidents. CAPT Schier has published more than 75 articles in peer-reviewed journals and CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

CAPT Schier has had multiple details to CDC’s Emergency Operations Center to support the response to the COVID19 pandemic and most recently completed a detail as a Chief Medical Officer for CDC’s Southwest Border Task Force supporting Operation Artemis. He has also served in 13 Agency and USPHS field deployments over his career for a variety of health threats including acute toxicological outbreaks/mass poisonings, hurricanes, and various health investigations/studies.

CAPT Schier served as a Medical Officer on one of the first USPHS Rapid Deployment Force Teams (RDF-3). During his 3-year tour on that team he became the Deputy Lead and then the Lead for the Planning Section and established the first set of Planning Team SOPs for deployment. He has served on numerous USPHS Committee’s and Workgroups since his CAD. He and his wife Aimee created the initial design for and coordinated the production of the first challenge coins for the USPHS Physician Category and for RDF-3.

CAPT Schier received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Widener University (Chester, PA) and a Doctor in Medicine degree from Temple University School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA) in 1998. He completed an Emergency Medicine Residency at Cooper University Hospital (Camden, NJ) in 2001 followed by a Fellowship in Medical Toxicology at Bellevue Medical Center/New York University (New York City, NY) in 2003. He earned a Masters in Public Health degree in Epidemiology from Emory Rollins School of Public Health (Atlanta, GA) in 2012.

CAPT Schier’s wife Aimee is an Executive with Universal Studios and they have two children Sophia and Jackson. Outside of work CAPT Schier is an avid fitness enthusiast, enthusiastic reader of science and dystopian fiction and loves watching television and cinematic comedies with his wife and children.