Wanda Barfield MD, MPH

Education

-Post-Doctoral Training: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Epidemic Intelligence Service
-Fellowship: Joint Program in Neonatology, Harvard Medical School
-Internship/Residency: Walter Reed Army Medical Center
-MD: Harvard Medical School
-MPH: Harvard/TH Chan School of Public Health
-B.S.: University of California, Irvine

Biography

Dr. Wanda Barfield, MD, MPH, FAAP, is Professor of Pediatrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, an Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine and a Health Policy Scholar at the Emory-Rollins School of Public Health. She served as Director of the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 14 years.

She is a Fellow with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and has served as the CDC liaison to the AAP Section on Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine (SoNPM) and Committee on Fetus and Newborn (COFN). She continues to provide direct clinical care as an attending physician in neonatology at Grady Medical Center in Atlanta, GA.
Dr. Barfield started her career at the University of California, Irvine, where she received a bachelor’s from UCI’s School of Biological Sciences. She received her joint medical and public health degrees from Harvard Medical School and Harvard/Chan School of Public Health. She completed her pediatrics residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship at Harvard’s Joint Program in Neonatology.
Dr. Barfield served as a medical officer, pediatrician, and neonatologist in the U.S. Army, before she transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service as part of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service in 2000. She worked in neonatal and perinatal health and rose to the position of Division Director in 2010. She rose to the rank of Rear Admiral and Assistant Surgeon General and retired from the uniform in 2020. Dr. Barfield’s research focuses on maternal/infant/fetal morbidity and mortality, early child health services utilization, improving access to risk-appropriate perinatal care, and advancing the quality of maternal, infant, and reproductive health data for public health action. She has published over 200 scientific articles in these areas.

Representative Bibliography

Wall HK, Hollier LM, Barfield WD, Wright JS. Quality Improvement Opportunities for Better Blood Pressure Management in Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period: The Hypertension in Pregnancy Change Package. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2025 Mar;34(3):284-291. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2024.1157. PMID: 39938885.

Spencer P, Ouyang L, Cox S, Tevendale H, Carrigan S, Behm B, Rosenthal J, Thompson AE, Lakusta M, Strunz E, D Barfield W. Assessing Early Impact of the Hear Her® Communication Campaign. Health Promot Pract. 2025 Jul 29:15248399251354966. doi: 10.1177/15248399251354966. PMID: 40731138.

Ouyang L, Gupta M, Cox S, Barfield W, Ko JY, Pollack L, Chen J, Riehle-Colarusso T, Wachman EM, Diop H. Population-Level Changes in Infant Outcomes Associated With State "Eat Sleep Console" Initiative. Hosp Pediatr. 2025 Aug 1;15(8):e371-e376. doi: 10.1542/hpeds.2024-008258. PMID: 40721219.

Ouyang L, Ekwueme DU, Galang R, Bauman BL, Romero LM, Barfield WD, Cox S. Patterns of Telehealth Use During Pregnancy and Postpartum Among Commercially Insured Women. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2025 Sep 22. doi: 10.1177/15409996251378322. PMID: 40977486.

Shapiro-Mendoza CK, Cottengim CR, Erck Lambert AB, Geary S, Barfield WD Parks SE. New Data on Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths by Cause and Race and Ethnicity: 2015–2022. Pediatrics. 2025;156(1): e2024069558. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2024-069558