The Emerging Pandemic of Coronavirus and the Urgent Need for Public Health Leadership

There is ample precedent for public health officials directing the control of emerging pandemics. Perhaps most notably, in the early 1960s, Alexander D. Langmuir, MD, Director of the Epidemic Intelligence Service and Epidemiology Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began to work closely with Donald A. Henderson, MD, Chief of the Virus Disease Surveillance Program at the CDC. Langmuir first introduced the idea of surveilling communicable diseases of national importance,1 and Henderson applied rigorous and evidenced-based public health principles and methodologies to the eradication of smallpox.