NCICP Speaker
Anne Schuchat, MD is an internist and epidemiologist whose career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spanned 33 years. She was the agency’s Principal Deputy Director from 2015-2021 and served twice as acting CDC director. From 2006-2015, she was the first Director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), leading the nation’s immunization program through recommendations for several new vaccines and the global deployment of vaccines against pneumonia and meningitis. Prior to becoming NCIRD director, Dr. Schuchat was Chief of the Respiratory Diseases Branch from 1998-2005. She first joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1988. She’s been instrumental in decades of CDC emergency responses including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 outbreak of vaping-associated lung injuries, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and the 2003 SARS outbreak where she deployed to Beijing. She collaborated on meningitis, pneumonia, and Ebola vaccine trials in West Africa and surveillance and prevention projects in South Africa. In the 1990s, Dr. Schuchat spearheaded the effort to establish guidelines for the prevention of newborn infections from group B streptococcus, preventing an estimated 100,000 life-threatening infections so far. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and received numerous honors, including the USPHS Distinguished Service Medal, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bruce Memorial Award for Preventive Medicine from the American College of Physicians, and as a finalist for the Service to America Medals – Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement Medal from the Partnership for Public Service. Dr. Schuchat retired as a Rear Admiral in the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service in 2018 and from the CDC in 2021. Schuchat is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Dartmouth Medical School and completed an internal medicine residency and chief residency at the New York University’s Manhattan VA Hospital. She currently serves as a member of the Board of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance as well as the Board of Managers for Swarthmore College.