James Buehler

James W. Buehler, MD, is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy and an affiliate of the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative.

Prior to joining the Drexel faculty in 2013, Dr. Buehler had over two decades of government public health service at the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and Georgia’s state health department, where his work spanned general field epidemiology, maternal and child health, infectious diseases (particularly HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis), population health surveillance, public health ethics, informatics, and emergency preparedness and response.

During the final 18 months of Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration, Drexel granted Dr. Buehler a leave-of-absence to serve as Philadelphia’s health commissioner, where he directed the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In that capacity, he was responsible for a broad spectrum of public health and safety-net clinical services and for leading the health department’s response to the threat of Ebola virus in 2014-15 and its preparations for the Pope’s visit to Philadelphia in 2015.

In addition to his position at Drexel, Dr. Buehler was formerly a research professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.

His research interests focus on advancing public health systems, including the interface between public health and health care services.

Dr. Buehler served as Interim Chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy from 2019-2022.

He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, the School of Medicine of the University of California at San Francisco, and CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service program; and he is board-certified in Pediatrics and General Preventive Medicine.