Cheryl is a veteran, international health practitioner, who began practicing medicine in1983, just two years after the first cases of HIV/AIDS defined a pandemic whose impact is greater than smallpox. Her varied interests led her to work in clinical-HIV trials in Roosevelt Island, New York; practice with homeless, shelter residents in Harlem; examine post-disaster, reproductive impacts on women residing near Three Mile Island; and help residents post-disaster recovery in St. Croix. She recognized early on the critical role of integrated systems of health, education, labor, and security in determining health futures. These experiences fueled her passion for public service. In 1993 Dr. Scott joined the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and was assigned to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

While at CDC, she continued an international career that led her to work in Cote d’Ivoire, India, Kenya, Jamaica, Tanzania, Lesotho, Ecuador, and Haiti. While in Tanzania, she established and led a $34 million CDC HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment program that laid a cornerstone for Tanzania’s rapid scale-up of national services. Under her leadership, Tanzania initiated the first-ever, no-cost, national, antiretroviral treatment program, and provided antiretroviral therapy and monitoring to more than 10,000 Tanzanians by 2005. Cheryl has received numerous awards including international recognition for her work in Tanzania.

Since retiring from the U.S. Public Health Service in 2010, Cheryl has worked with low-income communities in South-Central Los Angeles and California’s Central Valley to increase access to the unprecedented opportunity of the Affordable Healthcare Act. She has also provided primary-care services to veterans at several Veterans Administration community-based outpatient clinics.

She received her bachelor of arts degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine, and her masters in public health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.