Welcome to the website for the Madison Department of Public Health. Our job is to join with community partners to promote wellness, prevent disease, and help ensure that we have a healthy environment in which to live. We are in the midst of merging with the Dane County Division of Public Health, and as Director of the merging agency, I am working with staff to develop a common approach to delivering the best possible services to all Dane County residents. While there remains much work to be done, the more effective and efficient public health system that results will be well worth the effort.

Thomas Schlenker, MD, MPH, began full time work as Director of Public Health for Madison and Dane County on January 1, 2006. Previously, he had been chief medical officer of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin-Kenosha and a practicing pediatrician. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and attended Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he majored in political science. Dr. Schlenker received his MD degree from Northwestern Medical School in Chicago, completed a pediatrics residency at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and received a masters degree in public health from Harvard. His previous positions have included Deputy Commissioner for the Milwaukee Health Department and Executive Director of the Salt Lake City-County Health Department. He is on the faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin, through which he teaches a distance learning course on infectious diseases in public health. He has published research on various subjects including measles, whooping cough, hepatitis, childhood lead poisoning and public health issues in the Third World. Dr. Schlenker has clinical medicine and public health experience in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba, and speaks Spanish fluently.

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