Plenary - Where We Have Been / Anne Schuchat

Anne Schuchat is the director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and has worked at CDC since 1988 on immunization, respiratory, and other infectious diseases. Prior to her current appointment, she served as the director of CDC’s National Immunization Program (NIP); acting director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID); chief of the Respiratory Diseases Branch at NCID; and as the initial medical director of the Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs)/Emerging Infections Program Network, a multi-state collaboration between CDC, state health departments and academic institutions that tracks invasive bacterial infections, informs vaccine and prevention policy, and monitors program impact. Dr. Schuchat was named an Assistant Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service in 2006. She also served as CDC’s Interim Deputy Director for Science and Program from February to June 2009.Globally, she has worked in West Africa on meningitis vaccine studies, in South Africa on surveillance and prevention projects, and in China on SARS emergency response, where she headed the Beijing City epidemiology team for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) China Office. She served as a visiting professor for the Beijing Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Dr. Schuchat has made critically important contributions to the prevention of infectious diseases in children, including her role in perinatal group B streptococcal disease prevention where she spearheaded the development of CDC′s guidelines that have led to an 80 percent reduction in newborn infections and a 75 percent narrowing of racial disparities among sufferers of this infectious disease. She also has been instrumental in pre- and post-licensure evaluations of conjugate vaccines for bacterial meningitis and pneumonia and in accelerating availability of these new vaccines in resource-poor countries through WHO and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Anne Schuchat graduated with highest honors from Swarthmore College and with honors from Dartmouth Medical School. She served as resident and chief resident in internal medicine at New York University’s Manhattan VA Hospital before beginning her public health career at CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer.
She has authored or co-authored more than 180 scientific articles, book chapters, and reviews. Her contributions have been recognized by receipt of the USPHS Meritorious Service Medal, the American Public Health Association’s Maternal and Child Health Young Investigator Award, the USPHS Physician Research Officer of the Year, and an Honorary Doctorate in Science from Swarthmore College. In 2008, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine.