Supervising Epidemiologist
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Heidi Sato, PhD, MPH is a Supervising Epidemiologist at Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Acute Communicable Disease Control, Healthcare Outreach Unit. In this role, she leads the COVID Hospital Electronic Surveillance System team. She is currently an Adjunct Professor for the Department of Public Health & Healthcare Leadership at Radford University Carilion and a Contributing Faculty at Walden University. She also has served on over 25 doctoral dissertation committees. She was awarded by the American Public Health Association for her research involving the development of a statistical model to predict foodborne outbreaks at restaurants. She was also awarded by the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for developing an innovative database application called Foodborne Illness Advisor, which advises inspectors regarding the validity, etiology, and probable source of a foodborne illness complaint. She has served as an expert witness for the largest hepatitis A outbreak in the US. She has conducted research at the World Health Organization and worked on a medical project in Ghana, West Africa. She received her Ph.D. in Health Sciences from Touro University, her Master of Public Health from Columbia University, and her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley.