Leadership Fireside Chat with Dr. Bonnie Maldonado and Dr. Sara Cody

Sara H. Cody, MD

Health Officer, County of Santa Clara
Director, County of Santa Clara Public Health Department

Dr. Sara Cody serves as both Health Officer and Director of the Public Health Department for the County of Santa Clara. Born and raised in the County, she has worked for the Public Health Department for over 26 years and leads the organization in assessing community health, advocating for local health policies and leading disaster response. She is best known for her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic where, facing early cases and exponential growth with no vaccines or therapeutics on the horizon and little personal protective equipment available, she led a coalition of local health officers in the Bay Area to issue the first shelter-in-place orders in the United States. She received both local and national awards for her work and was the 2023-2024 Policy Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Dr. Cody received her undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, her Doctor of Medicine from Yale School of Medicine, and completed an internal medicine residency at Stanford Hospital. After residency, she served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the CDC, assigned to the California Department of Health Services (now the California Department of Public Health) where she investigated disease outbreaks across the state, including in Santa Clara County.