Dr. Laurene Mascola is chief of the Acute Communicable Disease Control (ACD) unit for the Los Angeles County Department of Health's Public Health Programs & Services, which performs disease surveillance and epidemic control activities for more than 60 diseases. Mascola oversees the County's programs for immunization, food and water safety epidemiology, vectorborne (insect) disease, hospital outbreaks and bloodborne diseases. Mascola has extensive experience in epidemiology and disease prevention, publishing more than 100 articles and abstracts in numerous medical and public health journals. She trained at the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service in Atlanta and has worked for the World Health Organization in Ethiopia, Brazil, India and Nepal. Special projects that she is either the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for include the county's Pediatric AIDS Surveillance, bioterrorism preparedness grant, Varicella Surveillance Project (VSP) to track varicella and varicella vaccination in the Antelope Valley. Mascola is a reviewer of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. She presents regularly at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC). In 1997, she received ICAAC's honor for best abstract for her paper, \"From Sea to Shining Sea,\" which examined fishborne outbreaks in Los Angeles County over a 20-year period. Previously, she has served as an expert member of the FDA's Food and Safety Committee in addition to serving on numerous national and statewide panels and committees on HIV/AIDS. Mascola received her M.D. from St. Louis University, her M.P.H. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her B. S. in biology from the University of Rochester. She is an attending physician at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and an assistant professor of pediatrics for the USC Keck School of Medicine.