Alumnus on front lines of Ebola, Zika outbreaks

The first person Matthew Groenewold ‘97 saw afflicted with the Ebola virus disease was a 9-year-old boy in a small village in Sierra Leone.

Groenewold was deployed to the Kambia District, Sierra Leone, in March 2015 in response to the Ebola virus epidemic ravaging West Africa.

He joined a team of international responders from the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the British military and several non-governmental organizations supporting the government of Sierra Leone.

One of the Groenewold’s first assignments was responding to reports of a child in a nearby village who was developing symptoms of the disease.

“The whole village had been decimated with Ebola shortly before I got there,” Groenewold said. “By the time I arrived in the Kambia District, everyone in the village had either died from Ebola, had fled the village or were quarantined in a household.”

By the time Groenewold was deployed, fewer and fewer cases of Ebola were cropping up in West Africa. But the Kambia District, in Sierra Leone’s Northern Province, remained a hot spot. For the next month, Groenewold performed surveillance and case investigation around the area. He also coordinated efforts to train the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces deployed along the border with Forrecaria, Guinea, to conduct Ebola screening at border crossing points.

While news of the Ebola virus outbreak dominated headlines domestically, Groenewold worked on the front lines to contain and minimize the disease’s spread.

“The best way to prevent Ebola from coming to the United States was to stop it in West Africa,” he said.

The team discovered that the boy had, indeed, become symptomatic and called an ambulance to his home.

Groenewold learned that the boy had died the next day at a treatment center.

“That experience was kind of a signal of what it was going to be like the rest of the time there,” Groenewold said.

Groenewold, who earned his Bachelor of Arts in Science from IU Southeast in 1997, is an epidemiologist and a lieutenant commander in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, assigned to CDC.

His primary role is to manage and evaluate surveillance systems for occupationally-related illnesses and injuries.

He participated in CDC/NIOSH’s domestic response to the 2009 H1NI Influenza pandemic, where he monitored workers’ health and workplace absenteeism. In 2010, he was deployed to the Gulf Coast for the NIOSH response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, where he monitored the long-term effects of more than 50,000 emergency response workers’ exposure to the oil and chemicals.

“NIOSH has a responsibility for protecting the health and safety of workers regardless of what the hazard might be, regardless of if it’s infectious or environmental,” Groenewold said. “In both cases, my particular role in the response was from the prospective of workers, whether it be responding to an oil spill or monitoring a teacher who might have exposure to H1N1.”

His work with CDC has enabled him to be on the front lines monitoring some of the most notable infectious diseases and environmental disasters of the past few years. As a result of his experience responding to H1N1, Deepwater Horizon and the Ebola outbreak landed Groenewold a position as a response leader on CDC’s new Global Rapid Response Team.

In October, Groenewold was called to CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, in response to the Zika virus epidemic. He serves on the Pregnancy and Birth Defect Task Force, which analyzes data from pregnancy registries around Puerto Rico and the U.S.

While most people would try to distance themselves as far as possible from hazards the magnitude of H1N1, Deepwater Horizon or the Ebola and Zika viruses, Groenewold has always been drawn to emergency response.

“In a lot of ways, my experience in West Africa and things like H1N1 are sort of unprecedented for me, but I had had a prior career as a paramedic, and that really revolved around dealing with crises,” Groenewold said.

“As a paramedic, I was involved on crises on an individual level, dealing with people’s personal or medical health emergencies. When you move to public health, you shift from an individual to a broader population.”

A native of Columbus, Indiana, Groenewold was a paramedic in Clark County for four years in the mid-1990s. He was also an EMT for three years and attended paramedic training at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Prior to that, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard and was deployed to the Mid-East Theater during Operation Desert Storm.

When his family moved to New Albany in 1994, Groenewold began taking classes at IU Southeast in order to meet the prerequisites to become a physician’s assistant. During that time, he noticed he was on track to complete a bachelor’s degree.

“I figured I might as well go ahead and get my degree in biology,” he said.

It was during lecturer Roy Holladay’s microbiology class that Groenewold’s ambitions began to shift their course.

“There was a brief part of the class that talked a little bit about epidemiology and how it related to microbiology and infectious disease,” Groenewold said. “That sparked my interest, even though it wasn’t immediate.”

After graduating in 1997, Groenewold spent the next decade working in the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, where he started as an environmental health specialist. During that time, he earned a Master of Science in Public Health and his PhD in 2008.

In an effort to bulk up public health preparedness after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government funded a position opened up for an epidemiologist. Remembering Holladay’s microbiology class, Groenewold applied, got the job and a few years later was accepted for a two-year, post-doctoral fellowship with the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program.

In 2008, he accepted a commission as an officer for the U.S. Public Health Service, serving his assignment at CDC.

Groenewold said he continues to be amazed at the “brilliant people” surrounding him at CDC’s centers and institutes.

“I sometimes sort of look around and can’t believe that this is where I wound up,” he said. “Gosh how did I get here? Fundamentally, I’m just a paramedic who somehow kind of slipped through the cracks and got lucky enough to be here.”

Though the big-picture rewards of the job can sometimes get lost in the day-to-day labor, Groenewold is mindful to reflect on how his contributions benefit the larger efforts towards public health.

“If you sit back and really look at it, it’s something you can really be proud of,” he said. “CDC has a mission that is a really noble mission. It really is about protecting and preserving and promoting the health of everybody – domestically and internationally. It’s a lofty mission, it’s a lofty goal, but that’s one of the big advantages of working in an organization like that.”

Though Groenewold’s work has taken him around the world and in the epicenter of large-scale infectious and environmental hazards, he doesn’t forget the place that first kindled the flame.

“I remember the first time I went to New Albany in 1992, and my wife and I drove past campus, and we were really kind of charmed by this little, very pleasant looking, sleepy looking campus tucked away in the hills,” he said. “There was something that was very appealing about it to both of us.”

While working in Louisville, Groenewold served as an adjunct professor on campus, teaching biology and medical terminology. His wife, Melissa, is a 2000 graduate of IU Southeast with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish. The two live in Prospect, Kentucky, and have a son, Levi, together.

“I’ve always found one reason or another to get back to campus,” he said. “I’ve really enjoyed seeing how it has grown.”

Photo by the U.S. Navy

Photo by the U.S. Navy

Protective equipment drying in the sun after being disinfected at the Ebola Holding Center in Kambia. (Photo by Matthew Groenewold)

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