Crafton - Leadership

Toby Crafton, MA

Deputy Director

Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance

Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services

Office of Public Health Scientific Services

Toby Crafton, MA, is deputy director of the Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance.

Prior to this position, Mr. Crafton served on detail as a senior advisor to the director of the Public Health Surveillance and Informatics Program Office. In this position, he provided expertise and advice related to budgets, spending plans, functional statements, organization charts, and staffing plans for the organization.

Previously, Mr. Crafton served as the program manager for the Influenza Coordination Unit (ICU) within the Office of Infectious Diseases. In this role, he was a member of the ICU’s senior leadership team that developed the plans and strategies to ensure that CDC is prepared for an influenza pandemic. Mr. Crafton managed a budget of more than $200 million per year. In addition, he was responsible for leading the efforts to address the lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic response that dealt with budget and administrative preparedness at both the state and federal levels.

He also served as the chief of staff for CDC’s response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which required him to coordinate the activities of the command and general staffs (approximately 400–500 people) during the course of the response.

Mr. Crafton also was part of the team that organized and started the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center and the Division of Emergency Operations. He was the first lead for the logistics support team where he was instrumental in establishing processes and procedures for logistically supporting CDC emergency responses and deployments.

Mr. Crafton’s federal service career started in 1980 when he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He served in positions of increasing responsibility for more than 20 years and retired in 2001.

His assignments included various command and staff positions in Army medical units, including combat units, deployable hospitals, and medical evacuation units. He also worked on the Army staff in the Pentagon where he formulated Department of Defense and Department of the Army policies on subjects that included re-engineering the Army’s medical force, the mobilization of personnel for deployments, and public health support for operations during war and support for natural disasters.

Mr. Crafton’s military schooling included Officer Basic and Advanced Courses and Command and General Staff College. He earned a master’s degree in management from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.