Matthew Ritchey, PT, DPT, MPH
As part of CDC Moving Forward, we're forming a new Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology. Stay tuned to this website for updates.
Captain, U.S. Public Health Service
Chief, Partnerships and Evaluation Branch
Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services
Deputy Director for Public Health Science and Surveillance
Matthew Ritchey, PT, DPT, MPH (CAPT, USPHS), serves as the chief of the Partnerships and Evaluation Branch in the Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance. In this position, CAPT Ritchey provides leadership and oversight to the CDC Data Hub, including CDC WONDER, and CDC’s Electronic Case Reporting program.
The CDC Data Hub is an enterprise-wide resource that connects researchers and programs with meaningful data to inform public health action. It accomplishes this mission by consolidating agency-wide data acquisitions and providing expertise and learning opportunities to advance data science at CDC. CDC WONDER furthers CDC’s mission of health promotion and disease prevention by improving access to data and information used by public health professionals for research, decision making, priority setting, program evaluation, and resource allocation. CDC’s Electronic Case Reporting program supports the automated, real-time exchange of case report information between electronic health records (EHRs) and public health agencies.
CAPT Ritchey joined CDC in 2008 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH). In this role, he served as a field-based epidemiologist and led multiple state and local infectious and chronic disease surveillance and disease outbreak management activities.
After EIS, CAPT Ritchey remained in Indiana as the CDC chronic disease epidemiology advisor. In this role, he built capacity for chronic disease and injury epidemiology within the ISDH through focused integration efforts across program areas, analysis and interpretation of health-related data, and coordination of disease-specific investigations. For his work with ISDH, he was awarded the Indiana State Health Commissioner’s Excellence in Public Health Award in 2012.
CAPT Ritchey then moved to Atlanta to serve as a senior scientist in the CDC Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention. He led the division’s Health Services and Systems Research Section, which involved overseeing multiple surveillance and research activities that supported the Million Hearts® initiative, regularly representing the division and CDC on national and international workgroups, supporting Healthy People and National Prevention Strategy efforts, and serving on the leadership team for The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Control Hypertension report in 2020.
CAPT Ritchey has supported multiple CDC response efforts, including coronavirus disease 2019; national outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury; the Flint, Michigan, water crisis; and the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic.
Prior to joining CDC, CAPT Ritchey served as a physical therapist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, treating pediatric and adolescent patients with orthopedic conditions and participating in quality improvement and injury prevention activities.
CAPT Ritchey received his BS in natural sciences from Xavier University (Ohio), MPH from Ohio State University, and doctorate in physical therapy from Duke University.