Danielle Rentz

Hunt, Ph.D.

Dr. Danielle Rentz Hunt is a project director with 20+ years of applied public health experience leading epidemiologic and surveillance projects at the international, federal, and state levels. Her areas of expertise include epidemiology, business development, environmental health, global health security, and clinical research. She’s designed, planned, and implemented community-based epidemiological studies on a variety of environmental and infectious exposures. She’s also served as lead epidemiologist on international and domestic outbreaks and developed and evaluated international and domestic surveillance systems.

Hunt currently directs five COVID-19 studies for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examining the effects of the disease on cohorts ranging from health workers, first responders, and essential workers to older adults in retirement communities. She also directs multi-site clinical investigations focused on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposures in the US and other large domestic and international projects funded by the CDC and other federal agencies. She provides epidemiology subject matter expertise to a range of public health projects, such as influenza and global health security activities.

Before coming to Abt, Hunt was a senior director at a woman-owned small business, leading business development efforts and technical oversight in federal and private sectors. She also provided scientific oversight in the design and implementation of the company’s research endeavors, specifically in the area of environmental health.

Hunt also served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Fellow and full-time epidemiologist at CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. There, she developed and implemented field investigations related to a range of environmental health issues, conducted outbreak investigations both domestically and abroad, and led secondary data analyses and publications.

Expertise:

• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Global Health
• Healthcare
• Infectious Diseases
• Project and staff management
• Quantitative and qualitative analyses
• Surveillance system design and evaluation
• SAS programming
• Literature reviews
• Technical writing

Key Projects:

• CDC COVID-19 studies of the disease’s transmissibility, infection and illness rates, clinical epidemiology, case characteristics, and vaccine effectiveness in five cohorts
• CDC NCIRD Epidemiology and Prevention of Influenza Virus Infections in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
• CDC/ATSDR Pease Proof of Concept Study, which looks at the human health effects of PFAS exposure through drinking contaminated water.
• CDC/ATSDR Data Coordinating Center for the Multi-Site Study of the Health Implications of Exposure to PFAS-Contaminated Drinking Water

Publications:

• Wagner AL, Gordon A, …. Hunt DR, Arbaji AK, Thompson MG. Intent to obtain pediatric influenza vaccine among mothers in four middle income countries. Vaccine. 2020 Jun 2;38(27):4325-4335. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.04.028. Epub 2020 May 6.
• Thompson MG, Levine MZ, Bino S, Hunt DR, et al. Underdetection of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospital admissions among infants: a multicentre, prospective study. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2019 Nov;3(11):781-794.
• Dawood FS, Hunt D, et al. The Pregnancy and Influenza Multinational Epidemiologic (PRIME) study: a prospective cohort study of the impact of influenza during pregnancy among women in middle-income countries. Reprod Health. 2018 Sep 21;15(1):159Thompson MG, Hunt DR, et al. Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus in infants study (IRIS) of hospitalized and non-ill infants aged <1 year in four countries: study design and methods. BMC Infect Dis. 2017 Mar 22;17(1):222.