Associate Director, Office of Strategy and Innovation

Staff Bio

Sarah Bacon, PhD

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

Sarah Bacon
Sarah Bacon is the associate director of the Office of Strategy and Innovation at the CDC Injury Center.

CDC role

Sarah Bacon, PhD, is the associate director for the Office of Strategy and Innovation (OSI) within the CDC Injury Center. In this role, Dr. Bacon provides center-wide leadership and coordination of the Injury Center's strategic priorities, including ACEs, overdose, and suicide. She also oversees other center-wide initiatives, such as data science and health equity.

Previous experience

Dr. Bacon began her time at CDC in 2010 in the Division of Violence Prevention, where she was the lead scientist for the National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention, a strategic initiative for implementing and evaluating violence prevention strategies in high-burden communities.

In 2015, she joined the Division of Overdose Prevention, where she led the state-based overdose prevention programmatic efforts. She joined OSI in November of 2019 as the senior advisor on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In this role, she provided strategic leadership and coordination across a range of injury and violence topics as they relate to ACEs. She also ensured strategic collaboration throughout CDC and with external agencies focusing on ACEs.

Areas of expertise

  • Adverse childhood experiences
  • Youth violence
  • Firearm violence prevention
  • Developmental criminology
  • Opioid overdose prevention
  • Prevention effectiveness research

Education

Dr. Bacon's PhD is in developmental criminology from the University of Maryland. She has published in Pediatrics, Journal of Adolescent Health, Adversity and Resilience Science, and MMWR among others. She has given hundreds of presentations to audiences ranging from policy makers to parents, community groups, academic partners, and public health professionals.