Dr. Gia Rutledge, DPPD, MPH serves in the Division of Diabetes Translation (DDT) in CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) in its inaugural role as the Associate Director of Health Equity (ADHE). In this role, Dr. Rutledge serves as a senior health scientist and advisor for the DDT providing scientific and strategic direction for health equity – a strategic priority of the Center and Division. She works across the division, center, agency and with our partners to operationalize DDT’s new strategic goal to enable and advance equity in diabetes prevention, management, and care. This includes assessing the national landscape of diabetes and equity; anticipating future needs, risks, challenges, and opportunities on multiple fronts, identifying evidence-based strategies and solutions, and leading the conceptualization, design, dissemination and implementation of a Health Equity Action Plan to advance and deepen our impact in diabetes across the nation. Dr. Rutledge has over 15 years of experience and service working across the CDC solving complex problems, developing collective impact strategies, designing, and implementing complex grants management systems and processes, conducting performance measurement, improvement, and evaluation of multiple national programs. Her passion and expertise for this work is evident in her tireless leadership and service as a health equity and social determinants of health subject matter expert on multiple cross-division, center level, and cross-agency workgroups and forums. Dr. Rutledge has a Doctorate in Policy, Planning and Development (DPPD) from the University of Southern California, a Master’s degree in Public Health (MPH) with an emphasis in Community Health Practice from the University of Arizona, and a Bachelor’s degree in Science of Biology from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).