Céline Gounder, MD, ScM, FIDSA
Why subscribe?
I’m Dr. Céline Gounder — an internist, infectious disease physician, epidemiologist, and journalist — and I’ve spent my career at the intersection of science, policy, and public trust.
I’ve worked in clinics and hospitals, through global health emergencies and domestic crises. I’ve reported from the field, advised policymakers, and helped translate complex evidence for the public when confusion carried real consequences.
Public health and health policy aren’t abstract or wonky. They determine who gets protected, who gets left behind, and who ultimately pays the price for our collective blind spots.
This newsletter focuses on public health, medicine, and policy, with a simple goal: to explain how the systems that shape health actually work.
Each issue takes a closer look at a question in medicine or public health and walks through the science, epidemiology, and policy behind it. Instead of hot takes or outrage cycles, the emphasis is on clear explanations, evidence, and systems thinking — the kind of analysis that helps readers understand not just what is happening, but why.
The perspective blends clinical medicine, epidemiology, and explanatory journalism.
Because in public health, the most important question usually isn’t who failed.
It’s how the system produced the outcome, and what would need to change to produce a better one.
That’s why I show up on television, in print, on podcasts, and online: to slow the conversation down and make it make sense.
Systemic is my home base, where you can find what I’m doing across platforms and stories that those other platforms might not let me cover. Subscribe and keep track.
Subscribe and stay connected.
Who this newsletter is for
This newsletter is for readers who want to understand health beyond the headline, including:
clinicians and health professionals
public health practitioners
policy makers and journalists
researchers and students
curious readers trying to make sense of the modern health system
If you’re interested in how science, medicine, and policy intersect to shape health, you’re in the right place.
My Bio
Internist, infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist, and medical journalist
I am a CBS News medical contributor and the Editor-at-Large for Public Health at KFF Health News. I am also a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. I care for patients on the wards at Bellevue Hospital Center. I am also a member of NYU Stern’s Volatility and Risk Institute’s Faculty Advisory Board.
Prior to joining CBS, I was a CNN Medical Analyst and a guest expert on numerous other networks.
From November 9, 2020 to January 20, 2021, I served on the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.
Between 2017 and 2018, I cared for patients at Indian Health Service and tribal health facilities in the southwest and far northeast of the United States. In early 2015, I spent two months volunteering as an Ebola aid worker in Guinea.
Early in my career, I worked in Brazil and southern Africa on screening for tuberculosis in high-risk HIV-infected and -uninfected populations, validating novel tests and algorithms for tuberculosis diagnosis and expedited treatment, and drug-drug interactions among pregnant women with TB and HIV. While on faculty at Johns Hopkins, I was the Director for Delivery for the Gates Foundation-funded Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic. I went on to serve as Assistant Commissioner of Health for Tuberculosis at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
I received my BA in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, my Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and my MD from the University of Washington. I was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital, and a post-doctoral fellow in Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University.
I was elected a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2016. In 2017, People Magazine named me one of 25 Women Changing the World. In 2021, InStyle Magazine named me one of 50 Women Making the World a Better Place. In 2023, I was named one of New York City & State’s Health Care Power 100, a New York State Woman of Distinction, and a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine. In 2023, I was also elected to the National Academy of Medicine and as a lifetime member to the Council on Foreign Relations; I also received the Research!America Meeting the Moment for Public Health Award . My podcast production team and I won the 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for a podcast by a small digital organization for American Diagnosis S4E5 “Power to Police Perpetrators.” In 2024, I joined the Board of Research!America and the Communication Initiative Advisory Panel of the Coalition for Trust in Health and Science.
I was married to my college sweetheart, Grant Wahl, from 2001 until his untimely death in December 2022, when he was covering the men’s World Cup in Doha, Qatar. He died at the age of 49 from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium.
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