Profile_Sarah_Bacon

Sarah Bacon, PhD Lead Behavioral Scientist Prescription Drug Overdose State Support Team Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention Center for Disease Control and Prevention

About the Speaker:

Dr. Sarah Bacon leads two of CDC’s opioid overdose prevention initiatives: Prevention for States and the Data-Driven Prevention Initiative.  She is a practice-oriented prevention scientist with experience spanning the fields of law enforcement, academia, and public health.  Across these disciplines and different domains, the common thread is her commitment to using data and science to make communities safer.

Sarah 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.  While much of her work focuses on evaluation, Sarah is also fully immersed in implementation science and has significant hands-on experience with the implementation realities that often challenge our scientific agendas.  Sarah moved to the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention in 2015, where she leads the Division’s efforts to prevent prescription drug overdose.  A key part of her role involves informing the development of  CDC’s scientific and programmatic directions for addressing prescription drug overdose.   Sarah holds a PhD in criminology, and prior to joining CDC she spent four years on the faculty of the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.