Caitlin Wolfe, PhD, CPH

Contact Info

• Office: CPH 1112 
• Academic Email: caitlinwolfe@usf.edu

Education

Biography

Dr. Caitlin Wolfe is an applied infectious disease epidemiologist and experienced global health practitioner focused on disease surveillance, outbreak preparedness and response, global health security, migration health, monitoring and evaluation, and climate-resilient health systems strengthening, particularly in fragile, conflict-affected, and vulnerable settings. She first came to USF as a PhD Student in 2016, eager to investigate strategies to improve disease surveillance in outbreaks and/or humanitarian emergencies. Her dissertation focused community-centered early warning for outbreaks in humanitarian emergencies, evaluating a community-based surveillance program for priority diseases among displaced populations in Iraq and she joined the COPH faculty as an Instructor in 2024. Dr. Wolfe has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) during multiple outbreak and emergency response efforts and on several disease surveillance, public health intelligence, health systems strengthening, and health and migration initiatives. Dr. Wolfe worked with the WHO Liberia Country Office during the Ebola response from 2014-2015. Later, she worked with the WHO Regional Office for Africa’s (AFRO) Health Emergency Programme on another Ebola outbreak in the DRC (2018). In 2020, her work with WHO shifted to COVID-19 response efforts. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, her work with WHO AFRO expanded to include neglected tropical diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and precision public health. Dr. Wolfe has also worked with IOM’s mission in Iraq as part of the Migration Health Division. Her scope of work included projects focused on community-based surveillance, outbreak response, climate resilience, durable solutions, community health promotion programs, monitoring and evaluation, piloting COVID-19 antigen rapid diagnostic tests for screening and diagnostics, and rapid assessment of the core capacities of outbreak emergency preparedness and response at the subnational level to promote global health security. Dr. Wolfe has also worked with IOM Libya on assessing disease surveillance mechanisms from the mobility perspective and with IOM Cambodia on developing a rapid needs assessment for returned migrant workers in response to the influx of hundreds of thousands returning to Cambodia from Thailand following the escalating border crisis in 2025. She also worked in health policy consulting, in state public health laboratories, and in emergency medical services. Dr. Wolfe aims to infuse examples of real public health problems and working through potential solutions into the material she teaches. She is the interim director of the MPH Foundational Core courses and teaches in Population Assessment I and II. Her core belief about teaching is that her role is to teach students how to think critically about the problems they will face as public health professionals and potential solutions. Dr. Wolfe is also the director of the COPH Professional Engagement Network (BullPEN).