Dr. Potter is the Director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Injury, Violence, and Suicide within the Health and Human Development Programs at EDC. He is the Director of two federally funded resource centers: the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) and the Children’s Safety Network (CSN).  His current work is focused upon providing assistance to state and local public health officials to develop and implement efforts to prevent violence, suicide, and unintentional injury.

From 1993-2000 Dr. Potter served as the Leader (Branch Chief) of Youth Violence and Suicide Prevention at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. In this position, he was responsible for management of all of CDC’s the scientific and programmatic efforts in youth violence and suicide prevention. He has been proactive in promoting violence and suicide as a public health issues and contributed substantially to building the violence prevention program at CDC.  During his tenure at CDC, he led the conduct of a hospital-based study of risk factors associated with suicidal behavior, developed a scientific forum on the relationship of sexual orientation and suicide, oversaw the establishment of a Native American/Alaskan Native Suicide Prevention Support Network in Dulce, New Mexico. He was a leader in the effort to develop a National Suicide Prevention Conference in Reno, Nevada in 1998. This conference led to production of The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Suicide, which he co-authored. In addition to his leadership roles with CSN and SPRC, since joining EDC, he managed development of the National Center for Suicide Prevention Training; worked on developing evaluation indicators for the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for SAMHSA and has evaluated implementation issues experienced by community-based violence prevention programs for SAMHSA. Dr. Potter has authored and co-authored numerous publications on the topics of violence and suicide prevention.  Among other awards, he is a recipient of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Award of Exemplary Service for his work in advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.

Dr. Potter received a Masters degree in Public Health from Emory University in Atlanta. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in sociology and demography. He also has a Master of Science degree in Education from the University of Houston. He taught elementary school from 1980-1983 and worked as an assistant professor of Sociology and Demography at Fordham University in New York from 1989-1991.