Biography of E. Anne Peterson
Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Global Health
 Dr. E. Anne Peterson was sworn in on Nov. 6, 2001, as assistant administrator of the Bureau for
Global Health for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID is the government
agency that provides economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide.
Dr. Peterson provides health leadership to the Bureau for Global Health, which is tasked with
technical and program support to field interventions as part of USAID's foreign aid in HIV/AIDS,
infectious disease control, reproductive health, child and maternal health, environmental health,
and nutrition.
Before coming to USAID, Dr. Peterson served for three years as Commissioner of Health for the State
of Virginia. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then-Virginia Gov. James Gilmore called
upon her to address the crisis caused by the attack on the Pentagon and subsequent anthrax bioterrorism.
Dr. Peterson has an extensive background in both U.S. and international public health and medical
practice. She has served as a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the
World Health Organization in Haiti and Brazil, designing elephantiasis treatment training materials
and evaluations of educational interventions. She has spent almost six years in sub-Saharan Africa
(Kenya and Zimbabwe) doing community development, public health training and AIDS prevention, as well
as performing U.S.-based research in chronic disease prevention, outbreak investigations and food
safety. The author of numerous scientific publications, Dr. Peterson has spoken extensively on the
national and local levels to community groups, scientific meetings and legislative committees on a
range of health issues.
Dr. Peterson obtained her M.D. from the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minn. and her M.P.H. and
Preventative Medicine residency from Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. She is board certified in
General Preventive Medicine and Public Health with medical licenses in Virginia, Georgia, Minnesota,
and Zimbabwe. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Dr. Peterson and her husband, also a public health physician, have three teenage children and live
in Northern Virginia.
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