Dr. Xu has more than 25 years’ successful experiences and achievements in innovation and administration of developing interoperable information systems and analyzing integrated health data for public health policy and practice. Before her retirement in 2018, she directed the Center for Health Data and Informatics in Utah Department of Health (UDOH), oversaw the statewide enterprise data management and data sharing and served on the UDOH Executive Leadership Team. Dr. Xu also served as the State HIT Coordinator working with ONC, a member of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials’ Informatics Policy Committee, and the UDOH member on the Board of Directors for the Utah Health Information Network, the Utah’s Health Information Exchange (HIE). Wu is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Utah’s Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Internal Medicine/Clinical Epidemiology, and Sociology. Dr. Xu, with her academic colleagues, also published applied researches in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Xu received the 2018 Utah Governor’s Awards for Excellence: 1) Individual Award for Outstanding Public Service and 2) Team Award for Outstanding Technology Innovation.
Wu joined the Utah Citizens Counsel in 2019. She will work with the health subcommittee and focus on health equality and health policies to improve health systems and health status of Utahns. Wu is also a member of the National Committee of Vital and Health Statistics.
Wu grew up in Beijing, China. During the Cultural Revolution, Wu was sent down to countryside at age 15 and worked in the field. Under the China reform policy, Wu received her B.A. in History from Sichuan University, China, 1980; M.A. in Political Sciences, Tianjin Normal University, China in 1983. Wu came to the U.S. for education and received her Ph.D. degree in Sociology with specialty in health demography from Utah State University in 1996.