Matthew D. Ritchey PT, DPT, OCS, MPH

Matthew Ritchey, PT, DPT, MPH (CAPT, USPHS), serves as the chief of the Partnerships and Evaluation Branch in the Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance. In this position, CAPT Ritchey provides leadership and oversight to the CDC Data Hub, including CDC WONDER, and CDC’s Electronic Case Reporting program. 

CAPT Ritchey joined the CDC in 2008 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH). In this role, he served as a field-based epidemiologist and led multiple state and local infectious and chronic disease surveillance and disease outbreak management activities. 

After EIS, CAPT Ritchey remained in Indiana as the CDC chronic disease epidemiology advisor. In this role, he built capacity for chronic disease and injury epidemiology within the ISDH through focused integration efforts across program areas, analysis and interpretation of health-related data, and coordination of disease-specific investigations. For his work with ISDH, he was awarded the Indiana State Health Commissioner’s Excellence in Public Health Award in 2012. 

CAPT Ritchey then moved to Atlanta to serve as a senior scientist in the CDC Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention. He led the division’s Health Services and Systems Research Section, which involved overseeing multiple surveillance and research activities that supported the Million Hearts® initiative, regularly representing the division and CDC in national and international workgroups, supporting Healthy People and National Prevention Strategy efforts, and serving on the leadership team for The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Control Hypertension report in 2020. 

CAPT Ritchey has supported multiple CDC response efforts, including coronavirus disease 2019; the national outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping product use-associated lung injury; the Flint, Michigan, water crisis; and the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic. 

Before joining the CDC, CAPT Ritchey served as a physical therapist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, treating pediatric and adolescent patients with orthopedic conditions and participating in quality improvement and injury prevention activities. 

CAPT Ritchey received his BS in natural sciences from Xavier University (Ohio), MPH from Ohio State University, and a doctorate in physical therapy from Duke University.