Appendix C
Speaker and Moderator Biographies
Narendra Kumar Arora, M.B.B.S., M.D., is a pediatrician and a public health expert. He obtained his M.B.B.S. (1976) and M.D. (1979) from the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) New Delhi. He was the recipient of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Talent Search Scheme to pursue his post-graduation and subsequent fellowship training. Dr. Arora was instrumental in establishing the Pediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology Division at AIIMS New Delhi and was a pioneer in promoting this pediatric super-specialty in India. He received his master’s training in clinical epidemiology and biostatistics from the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of New South Wales, under the Rockefeller International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) Fellowship program in 1993. Dr. Arora joined the Faculty of AIIMS New Delhi in 1983 and left in 2005 to join the INCLEN Trust International as the global executive director. In 2018, the Government of India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) nominated him as the president of AIIMS Patna and AIIMS Deoghar.
Dr. Arora has had an extensive academic and research career, having made major contributions to the immunization sector at both national and global levels. He has been working for the immunization of Indian children through a series of large multi-center studies that address performance of pulse polio immunization programs, injection practices, and safety in India, the safety of vaccines administered under the Universal Immunisation Programme (Government of India), including Pentavalent, and cold chain infrastructure in the country. He has also provided leadership to several national policy-making bodies, including the National Adverse Event Fol-
lowing Immunization Committee Expert Group for the rollout of rotavirus vaccine and pneumococcal vaccines; the Maternal and Child Health Services (Government of India) steering group of ICMR; and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) (Government of India) Biopharma Mission, DBT Scientific and Technical Advisory Group. Dr. Arora has been a member of MOHFW, ICMR, and DBT for the past two decades. He has served as the chair of the National Certification Committee for Polio Eradication since 2014, and as the chair of the National Verification Committee for Measles, Rubella, and CRS. He has been a member of the National Technical Advisory Group for Immunization (India) since 2004.
Dr. Arora is credited on more than 200 research papers and is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Late Honorary Surgical Commander Dr. Shantilal C. Sheth Oration at PEDICON 2017, the Kerala Health Sciences University Oration (2017), and the Yogamaya Devi Award (2019) from the Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Science (Pune).
Julie Bettinger, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor at the Vaccine Evaluation Center in the Department of Pediatrics at The University of British Columbia. She was trained in infectious disease epidemiology and public health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Her research interests include vaccine safety and vaccine-preventable diseases (specifically meningococcal and pneumococcal invasive infections), as well as attitudes and beliefs around immunization uptake and use. She is the epidemiologist and the data center director for the Canadian Immunization Monitoring Program ACTive, an active surveillance network for vaccine-preventable diseases and vaccine-adverse events in 12 tertiary care pediatric hospitals across Canada. Dr. Bettinger is also the lead investigator for the Canadian National Vaccine Safety network, which conducts influenza vaccine safety monitoring in more than 40,000 Canadians each year.
Dr. Bettinger’s research addresses key questions about vaccines and immunization programs to ensure optimal disease protection in the population. She uses quantitative and qualitative methods to address important questions about vaccine use across the life cycle of provincial and national immunization programs. By providing a clear understanding of the epidemiology of vaccine-preventable diseases, her research enables further study of the factors (social, cultural, environmental, microbiological, and economic) that can result in suboptimal immunization and poor protection against these diseases at a population level. Her work is featured in publications such as the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Vaccine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Her research is supported by operating and infrastructure funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Michael
Smith Foundation for Health Research, and the British Columbia Immunization Committee.
Noel T. Brewer, Ph.D., is a professor of health behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Brewer’s research explores why people engage in vaccination and other health behaviors that prevent cancer. He has published more than 280 papers on these topics, including behaviors related to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, tobacco warnings, and screening tests. He was recognized by Clarivite as among the top 0.1 percent most cited researchers in the world from 2017 to 2019. The Announcement Approach Training developed by Dr. Brewer and colleagues teaches health care providers to communicate more effectively about HPV vaccination and other vaccines for adolescents. More than 1,200 providers in 17 states have received the training. The National Cancer Institute designated it as a Research-Tested Intervention Program, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommend use of presumptive announcements when recommending the HPV vaccine. Free materials are available at hpvIQ.org. A large clinical trial by Dr. Brewer and colleagues found that pictorial warnings for cigarette packs help smokers quit. The findings informed a successful lawsuit by the American Medical Association and seven other organizations to force the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implement the enhanced warnings that had been held up by a previous lawsuit. Implementation of the new warnings is now ongoing. Dr. Brewer was the inaugural chair of the National HPV Vaccination Roundtable. He has advised on vaccination for the World Health Organization, CDC, the President’s Cancer Panel under two presidents, and the National Vaccine Advisory Committee. Dr. Brewer co-edited FDA’s book Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide. Media coverage of his research includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NPR, and CNN. He is proudest of the coverage by The Onion. More than 40 students and 11 postdoctoral researchers have completed their training in his Health Cognition and Behavior Lab. Many of these trainees have moved on to postdocs and faculty positions at leading institutions.
Daniel J. Carucci, M.D., M.Sc., Ph.D., is the global medical director for McCann Health’s new Global Health offering, providing strategic and technical support for health communications programs that focus on the needs of women and children in the developing world. He is currently the chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Southern Africa International
Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research (National Institutes of Health [NIH]). He is the co-creator of the Immunity Charm, a simple and inexpensive communications tool that harnesses long-standing traditional beliefs to improve vaccine coverage and compliance among children in the developing world. Dr. Carucci is the former vice president for global health at the United Nations Foundation, and he is the former director of the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative at the Foundation for NIH. He has served on the boards of directors for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Rollback Malaria Partnership; the Jane Goodall Institute; Grand Challenges Canada; and the McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Molecular Medicine. Dr. Carucci served 20 years active duty as a U.S. Navy flight surgeon and researcher, retiring with the rank of Captain. He received his M.D. from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He also holds an M.Sc. in clinical tropical medicine and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Dr. Carucci has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has been the recipient of numerous awards and medals for his research, military service, and medical practice.
Stefan Flasche, Ph.D., has a diploma (master’s equivalent) in mathematics from the Technische Universität in Berlin, and he earned a Ph.D. in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases at Strathclyde University and Public Health England. Since his Ph.D. he has been fascinated by the complexities and challenges of pneumococcal vaccination, which has been his main focus of work. As of 2018, Dr. Flasche’s research in this area is funded through a Sir Henry Dale Wellcome Trust Fellowship. Dr. Flasche has also worked in outbreak response (swine flu and Ebola) and has advised the World Health Organization (WHO) on disease modeling (including dengue and malaria). He currently serves on the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization’s (SAGE’s) working group on pneumococcal conjugate vaccines and on the WHO SAGE working group on dengue vaccines, as well on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization’s pneumococcal subgroup.
Jeffery A. Goad, Pharm.D., M.P.H., is a tenured professor of pharmacy practice and the inaugural chair of the Chapman University School of Pharmacy. He received his Pharm.D. from the University of Southern California (USC) School of Pharmacy and his M.P.H. from the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He completed a residency in pediatric pharmacy practice at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and holds the certificate of knowledge in travel health from the International Society of Travel Medicine. For more than 20 years, Dr. Goad has maintained an active practice in travel health clinics and immunization services. He coordinates and teaches courses
in travel medicine, immunizations, epidemiology, and parasitology. He is currently a national faculty and advisory board member for the American Pharmacists Association’s (APhA’s) Pharmacy-Based Immunization Training Program and the chair of the APhA Travel Medicine Advanced Competency Training Course. He has presented at more than 300 pharmacy and medical conferences and published more than 70 articles and book chapters. Dr. Goad is the vice president for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the former chair for the International Society of Travel Medicine Pharmacist Professional Group, and the former president for the California Immunization Coalition and the California Pharmacists Association.
Anuradha Gupta, M.B.A., is the deputy chief executive officer of Gavi. Since joining Gavi in 2015, Ms. Gupta has led efforts to put equity and gender at the center of Gavi’s programmatic planning and to tailor support to countries within Gavi’s strategy. She has also driven efforts to create a new model of country-level Gavi support through the establishment of a Partners’ Engagement Framework. At the same time, Ms. Gupta has helped improve country ownership and leadership of Gavi-supported programs besides enhancing accountability for results. Prior to Gavi, Ms. Gupta served as the mission director of the National Health Mission in India, where she ran the largest—and possibly most complex—public health program in the world with an annual budget of $3.5 billion. A passionate and influential advocate of women, young girls, and children, Ms. Gupta played a leading role in India’s efforts to eradicate polio transmission, reduce maternal and child mortality, and revitalize primary health care. Ms. Gupta has contributed to a number of important global health initiatives. She served as a member of the Steering Committee for Child Survival: Call to Action, co-chaired the Stakeholder Group for the London Family Planning Summit 2020, and was a member of the Family Planning 2020 Reference Group. Ms. Gupta served as the co-chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health and is currently a board member. She also played a role in the shaping of the Global Financing Facility (GFF) and is a member of the GFF Investors’ Group. From 2015 to 2018, Ms. Gupta served on the Merck for Mothers Advisory Board. Ms. Gupta holds an M.B.A. from the University of Wollongong in Australia and received executive education from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Stanford School of Business, and Maxwell School at Syracuse University. She was included on the list of Top 300 Global Women Leaders in Health in 2015 by the Graduate Institute of International and Developments Studies and The Lancet.
Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., is an internationally recognized physician–scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. He is the dean
of the National School of Tropical Medicine and a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at the Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also the director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and the Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also a university professor at Baylor University, a fellow in disease and poverty at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, a senior fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, a faculty fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University, and a health policy scholar in the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy. As the head of the Texas Children’s CVD, Dr. Hotez leads a team and product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and coronavirus diseases (e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome, coronavirus disease 2019)—diseases affecting hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide—while championing access to vaccines in the United States and globally. In 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative, he co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people.
Dr. Hotez obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (Phi Beta Kappa), followed by a Ph.D. in biochemistry from The Rockefeller University in 1986, and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987. He has authored more than 500 original papers and is the author of 4 single-author books, including Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases (ASM Press); Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor Amid Wealth (Johns Hopkins University Press); Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism (Johns Hopkins University Press); and a forthcoming book on vaccine diplomacy in an age of war, political collapse, climate change, and anti-science (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Dr. Hotez served previously as the president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and he is the founding editor-in-chief of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (Public Health Section) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Public Policy Section). In 2011, he was awarded the Abraham Horwitz Award for Excellence in Leadership in Inter-American Health by the Pan American Health Organization of the World Health Organization. In 2014–2016, he served in the Obama administration as U.S. Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the U.S. government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2018, he was appointed by the U.S. Department of State to serve on the board of governors for the U.S.–Israel Binational Science Foundation, and he is frequently called on to testify before Congress. He has served on infectious disease task forces
for two consecutive Texas governors. For these efforts in 2017 he was named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the 34 most influential people in health care, while in 2018 he received the Sustained Leadership Award from Research!America. In 2019 he received the Ronald McDonald House Charities Award for Medical Excellence. Most recently as both a vaccine scientist and an autism parent, he has led national efforts to defend vaccines and to serve as an ardent champion of vaccines going up against a growing national “anti-vax” threat. In 2019, he received the Award for Leadership in Advocacy for Vaccines from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Hotez appears frequently on television (including BBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), radio, and in newspaper interviews (including The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal).
Clarissa Hsu, Ph.D., is an assistant investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. As a medical anthropologist, she has spent more than 20 years exploring how social and cultural factors shape health and health care. Dr. Hsu’s work spans a wide variety of health-related issues, including clinical transformation and health care design, addressing social determinants of health in clinical settings, patient-centered care, and complementary and integrative medicine. Dr. Hsu has been the principal investigator for a number of qualitative and mixed-method studies, including the evaluation of the Immunity Community intervention, an innovative approach to addressing vaccine hesitancy using concepts drawn from social marketing. She also serves on the steering committee for Vax Northwest.
Catherine Jackson, Ph.D., M.Sc., has more than 15 years of experience in the university sector, undertaking applied health services research and evaluation. She has worked as a public health specialist and held research positions at the Universities of Leeds and York. In addition to managing Valid Research, Dr. Jackson is a visiting senior research fellow in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York and a consultant for the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. She has a Ph.D. in health psychology and an M.Sc. in health promotion and health education. Dr. Jackson has considerable experience in all stages of delivering research and evaluation projects, from securing funding, establishing teams, and collecting and analyzing data through writing up, reporting, and publishing findings. Skilled in conducting quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research, she has worked in the United Kingdom and internationally with a focus on public health. Her particular research interests are health literacy and decision making for childhood immunization. She has a track record of conducting research with marginalized communities.
Mohamed F. Jalloh, M.P.H., is a behavioral epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-Tanzania. Prior to his current position, Mr. Jalloh served as a behavioral epidemiologist in the Global Immunization Division at CDC, where he designed, implemented, and evaluated interventions to improve global demand and uptake of lifesaving vaccines. His immunization work comprises a diverse portfolio of projects, including strengthening of immunization systems in Sierra Leone; responding to an outbreak of diphtheria among displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh; evaluating RTS,S malaria vaccine implementation in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi; and assessing the drivers of Ebola vaccine acceptance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. In addition, he led the development and validation of the Vaccination Acceptance and Demand Scale, and represented CDC on the World Health Organization’s global working group to standardize global measures of vaccination behaviors. Prior to working in immunization, Mr. Jalloh was an epidemiologist in the Division of Global Health Protection, where he provided technical guidance on CDC’s global health security priorities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, he contributed to establishing the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance study site and supported the evaluation of Sierra Leone’s implementation of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in infants. Before joining CDC, he served as a senior research and an evaluation manager with FOCUS1000, a nongovernmental organization in Sierra Leone, where he led mixed-method assessments on reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health. While there, he managed a team of 10 full-time staff and a roster of data collectors in monitoring and evaluating national public health programs. During the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak response in West Africa, Mr. Jalloh led five national surveys to measure changes in the public’s Ebola-related knowledge and behaviors in Guinea and Sierra Leone. In this same period, he also managed a digital reporting system for community-based Ebola surveillance used by 2,000 community reporters. Mr. Jalloh was scheduled to defend his Ph.D. in September 2020 at Karolinska Institutet, where his doctoral research has focused on Ebola behavioral surveillance. He obtained his M.P.H. in health behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his B.S. in public health from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Mr. Jalloh has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers on a range of public health topics.
Momin Abdul Kazi, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., Ph.D.(c), is an assistant professor at the Aga Khan University (AKU) Hospital. He is a physician (M.B.B.S., Dow Medical College, Pakistan), an epidemiologist (M.Sc., Vanderbilt University), and is pursuing his Ph.D. from The University of British Columbia. Dr. Kazi’s research focuses on evaluating and implementing digital and
mobile health interventions, using technology as a research tool in studies and public health projects related to vaccine-preventable diseases. Currently Dr. Kazi is involved as an investigator with multiple research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Grand Challenges Canada, to name a few. He is also the co-director of the Research Methods and Applications for Digital Health course, offered to graduate students at AKU. His current work and interests include development and evaluation of systems for real-time data visualization, geospatial analysis, development of auto-generated programs to disseminate public health messages through short message service and voice messages, and other digital applications for improving maternal and child health, including vaccination coverage. He has published more than 40 papers with an h-index of 22, and heavily advocates for mobile phone–based interventions for improving coverage of vaccine-preventable diseases in lower- and middle-income countries. He has both published and reviewed for leading journals, including The Lancet, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, BMJ, BMC, Vaccine, and the Journal of Medical Internet Research, with topics primarily focusing on digital health.
Imran Khan, M.Sc., M.B.A., is Wellcome’s Head of Public Engagement and works on the connections among science, society, and culture. He leads Wellcome’s efforts in involving the public in its mission of improving health through science and research. This includes supporting the public to trust, use, and inform health research, as well as working with scientists to connect with the rest of society. Mr. Khan is also a trustee of the United Kingdom’s innovation foundation, Nesta.
Julie Leask, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor and a social scientist in the Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. Her research focuses on risk communication, responding to vaccine hesitancy and refusal, and strengthening vaccination programs and policy. She has 137 publications in the field. Dr. Leask is a visiting professorial fellow at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance. She is the chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group on Measuring Behavioural and Social Drivers of Vaccination, and she sits on the WHO Immunization and Vaccines-related Implementation Research advisory committee. Dr. Leask is also a member of the Southeast Asia Regional Immunization Technical Advisory Group. She was named overall winner of the Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence in 2019.
Louise Letley, R.N., M.Sc., qualified as a nurse in Northern Ireland in 1987. She has extensive primary care clinical research experience. This included
almost 15 years of working at a national level for the Medical Research Council’s General Practice Research Framework, where she worked on a number of large public health studies and obtained her M.Sc. from Queen Mary University of London in 2002. Following this she worked at both the national and local level of the newly developed National Institute for Health Research Primary Care Research Network before moving to the National Immunisation Team at Public Health England in 2013. Initially, the main responsibility of the role was to coordinate the evaluation and help support the sites piloting the implementation of the childhood flu program. Since the successful national rollout of the program, Ms. Letley has worked on a number of research projects within the department, including the infant and teenager attitudinal surveys. She was also part of the team working in collaboration with the World Health Organization to deliver the Tailoring Immunization Programmes within the Charedi community in northeast London.
Ethan Lindenberger is a 19-year-old high school graduate from Norwalk High School in Norwalk, Ohio. Mr. Lindenberger has a part-time job, has an internship, and is going to college in the fall. However, in early February 2019, he began to find media attention after pursuing vaccines against the approval of his mother. This became a national story, even leading him to testify in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions about his experiences. Since then, Mr. Lindenberger has continued to take part in advocating for science. He has appeared on most major news networks, including Fox, GMA, CNN, MSNBC, and more. He believes that each individual has a role in ending misinformation, and he has spoken to the importance of scientific truth while also maintaining respect for those that have fallen victim to misinformation.
Ann Lindstrand, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a pediatrician and a public health specialist with an M.P.H. from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Ph.D. in pneumococcal vaccine epidemiology from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. She has 30 years of experience in global health, research, lecturing, and program implementation, working mainly in Angola, French Guyana, India, Mozambique, and Uganda. Her main focus of interest is vaccinology, maternal and child health, and humanitarian work. She has worked for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Doctors Without Borders, in the field and served as the president of the MSF board in Sweden for many years. She has worked as the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Coordinator in the Department of Immunization and Biologicals at the World Health Organization (WHO) since September 2018. Before WHO she was the EPI manager for the national immunization program in Sweden for 5 years.
Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H., is currently the strategic advisor to the chief executive officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives. She is also a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, a member of the research faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor of medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. She served an 8-year term as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In that role she led the HHS response to numerous public health emergencies, ranging from infectious disease to natural and human-made disasters and is responsible for many innovations in emergency preparedness and response. She also chaired the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, a government-wide organization ultimately responsible for the development of medical countermeasures, including vaccines against pandemics and emerging threats.
Prior to federal service, Dr. Lurie was the Paul O’Neill Professor of Policy Analysis at RAND, where she started and led the public health preparedness program and RAND’s Center for Population Health and Health Disparities. She has also had leadership roles in academia as a professor of medicine and public health at the University of Minnesota; as the medical advisor to the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health; and as the principal deputy assistant secretary for health at HHS. Dr. Lurie received her B.A. and M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and completed her residency and public health training at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research has focused on access to and quality of care, health system redesign, equity, mental health, public health, and preparedness. She is the recipient of numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She continues to practice clinical medicine in a community clinic in Washington, DC.
Michelle Mello, J.D., Ph.D., is a professor of law at Stanford Law School and a professor of medicine in the Center for Health Policy/Primary Care and Outcomes Research in the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She conducts empirical research into issues at the intersection of law, ethics, and health policy. She is the author of more than 200 articles and book chapters on medical liability, public health law, pharmaceuticals and vaccines, biomedical research ethics and governance, health information privacy, and other topics. The recipient of a number of awards for her research, Dr. Mello was elected to the National Academy of Medicine at the age of 40. From 2000 to 2014, she was a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she directed the school’s program in law and public health. Dr. Mello teaches courses in torts and public health law. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.D. in health policy and administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a B.A. from Stanford University.
Monika Naus, M.D., is the medical director of the Communicable Diseases and Immunization Service, and she is the head of Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Immunization Programs at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). She is also a professor at the School of Population and Public Health at The University of British Columbia. Dr. Naus obtained her medical training at the University of Alberta and her training in public health and preventive medicine at the University of Toronto. She then served as a federal field epidemiologist with the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control while still in her residency, and subsequently her career focus has been in communicable disease prevention and control. Before joining BCCDC in July 2001, she was the provincial epidemiologist and physician manager of the Disease Control Service in Ontario from 1997 to 2001, and a senior medical consultant in vaccine-preventable diseases and tuberculosis control for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care from 1990 to 1997. She has been active in immunization at the national level, including on the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), which she chaired from 2003 to 2007 after being a member for 8 years, and she is a member of several NACI expert groups and liaison representative as the co-chair of the Canadian Immunization Committee. She is a member of the Canadian Immunization Registries and Coverage Network, a co-chair of the Automated Identification of Vaccine Products Working Group, and a member of the Canadian Immunization Research Network, and she is involved in other national and provincial committees. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and the American College of Preventive Medicine.
Sean O’Leary, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist, an investigator at the Adult and Child Consortium for Outcomes Research and Delivery Science, and the director of the Colorado Children’s Outcomes Network, Colorado’s pediatric practice-based research network. After completing college at Brown University and medical school at The University of Texas at Houston, Dr. O’Leary did his pediatric residency in Denver at Children’s Hospital/University of Colorado. Following residency, Dr. O’Leary was a partner in a large pediatric practice in Fort Collins, Colorado, for 8 years. He then returned to Denver to pursue an infectious diseases fellowship as well as a Primary Care Research Fellowship. Dr. O’Leary’s research focuses on prevention of vaccine-preventable diseases through understanding clinical, attitudinal, and infrastructural barriers to vaccination, and developing and testing interventions to address those
barriers. Dr. O’Leary serves as the liaison to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and is the vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases (the Red Book Committee) of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Jean-Marc Olivé, M.D., M.P.H., started as a general practitioner and an occupational medicine physician in Paris, then as resident gynecologist and obstetrician at the Ministry of Health in Zambia. Before joining the World Health Organization (WHO), he worked for disaster relief in Zaire and was a resident in preventive medicine at the Maryland State Department. In 1980, he was appointed as Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Medical Epidemiologist for WHO, posted in Sudan, then in Pakistan, and later in Peru. At the Pan American Health Organization, Dr. Olivé became the EPI regional adviser, where he contributed to the successful poliomyelitis eradication and measles elimination in the Americas, both initiatives being part of the effort to further strengthen and institutionalize EPI in the region. In 1994, he moved to WHO headquarters in Geneva as the measles focal point, then served as the acting chief of EPI and finally the special project leader for the Vaccines and Biologicals Department in charge of strengthening immunization services. In 2002, Dr. Olivé was appointed as the WHO Representative in the Philippines and then in Vietnam until his retirement at the end of 2010. Since 2011 he has worked as a consultant supporting the Polio Partnership in priority countries, including measles, rubella, and routine immunization activities. He has been appointed as the chair of several polio technical advisory groups (Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lake Chad) and a member of various WHO vaccine-related technical advisory groups and reviews. He is a member of the Gavi Independent Review Committee.
Saad B. Omer, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., M.P.H., is the inaugural director of the Yale Institute for Global Health and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Yale University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He has conducted studies in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda, and the United States. Dr. Omer’s research portfolio includes clinical trials to estimate efficacy and safety of maternal and infant influenza, pertussis, polio, measles, and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines and trials to evaluate drug regimens to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He has published more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has mentored more than 100 junior faculty, clinical, and research postdoctoral fellows and Ph.D. and other graduate students.
Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Ph.D., is a professor of law at the University of California (UC) Hastings College of the Law. Her research and activities are
increasingly focused on legal issues related to vaccines, including exemption laws and tort liability related to non-vaccination. She has published law review and peer-reviewed articles and blog posts on legal issues related to vaccines. She received an undergraduate degree in law and political science (1999, magna cum laude) from the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D. from the jurisprudence and social policy program at UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Parents Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, and is also active in vaccine advocacy in other ways.
Patricia A. (Patsy) Stinchfield, R.N., M.S., C.P.N.P., has been a pediatric nurse practitioner for more than 30 years. She is currently specializing in infectious disease, infection prevention, and vaccines at the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. She is also the senior director of infection control and the program director for the Children’s Immunization Project, a collaborative effort in Minnesota bringing immunization information to parents, providers, and the community. Ms. Stinchfield is a past voting member and current liaison to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, representing the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. She serves as an associate clinical faculty member at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and sits on several committees, including the Minnesota Department of Health Immunization Advisory Committee. She is the vice president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. A frequent presenter on immunization topics at local and national conferences, including the CDC National Immunization Conference, she is a graduate of Moorhead State University and the University of Utah School of Nursing.
Litjen (L. J.) Tan, M.S., Ph.D., is the chief strategy officer for the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC). Prior to joining IAC, Dr. Tan was the director of medicine and public health at the American Medical Association (AMA), a position he held since 2008. From 1997 to 2008, he was AMA’s director of infectious disease, immunology, and molecular medicine. Dr. Tan was a voting member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2013, where he served on the adult immunization, vaccine safety, and health care worker immunization working groups, and chaired the immunization infrastructure working group. He also served for more than 10 years as AMA’s liaison to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, where he served on the influenza, pneumococcal, zoster, and adult immunization working groups. Dr. Tan co-founded and currently co-chairs the National Adult and Influenza Immunization
Summit. He serves or has served on the steering committees or advisory boards of the 317 Coalition, the Adult Vaccine Access Coalition, the Unity (United for Adolescent Vaccination) Consortium, the National Network for Immunization Information, the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, and on the IAC scientific advisory board. Dr. Tan also serves, or has served, on the National Quality Forum’s Adult Immunizations Expert Committee, the Pharmacy Quality Alliance’s Adult Immunization Working Group, and numerous national and international expert and technical advisory committees, including panels for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, The Joint Commission, and CDC on issues ranging from vaccine hesitancy to immunization quality measurement development, adult immunizations, and immunization access and delivery. In 2007, he founded the National Immunization Congress and organized its 2007 and 2010 meetings.
Dr. Tan received his M.S. in biology at New York University and earned his Ph.D. in microbiology/immunology from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Tan is an editor for Vaccine, BMC Infectious Diseases, Medscape Infectious Diseases, a member of the ESCMID Vaccine Study Group and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles. During his tenure at AMA, he wrote numerous scientific reports to guide the association’s policies on a diverse range of public health topics. A skilled and sought-after speaker, Dr. Tan has been invited to address international, national, and state immunization audiences on issues ranging from vaccine financing to risk management in vaccine safety to emerging infectious diseases.
Dr. Tan has received several awards for his advocacy work including the 2011 CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Honor Awards: Excellence in Partnering recognition, and most recently he was awarded the American Pharmacists Association’s national Friend of Pharmacy Award. As a former part-time faculty member at the Institute for Science Education and Science Communication, Columbia College, Chicago, he received the 2000 Excellence in Teaching Award.
Sander Van Der Linden, Ph.D., is a professor of social psychology and the director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment and decision making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the Sage Young Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Sir James Cameron Medal for the Public Understanding of Risk from the Royal College of Physicians. He also received the 2020 Frank Prize from the University of Florida for his research on fake news. Wired magazine described him as one of 15 Top Thinkers and Fast Company referred to him as one of four heroes of digital democracy. His research papers have
received awards from organizations such as the American Psychological Association, the International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and the co-editor of the recent book Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society (2019).
K. “Vish” Viswanath, Ph.D., is the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and in the McGraw-Patterson Center for Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). He is also the faculty director of the Health Communication Core of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Other additional administrative and scientific leadership positions held by Dr. Viswanath include the director of the Center for Translational Communication Science, DFCI/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; director, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, India Research Center; and co-director, Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the founding director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center’s Enhancing Communications for Health Outcomes Laboratory.
Dr. Viswanath’s work, drawing from literature in communication science, social epidemiology, and social and health behavior sciences, focuses on translational communication science to influence public health policy and practice. His primary research is in documenting the relationship among communication inequalities, poverty and health disparities, and knowledge translation to address health disparities. He has written more than 250 journal articles and book chapters concerning communication inequalities and health disparities, knowledge translation, public health communication campaigns, e-health and the digital divide, public health preparedness, and the delivery of health communication interventions to underserved populations. He is the co-editor of four books and monographs and the editor of the Social and Behavioral Research section of the 12-volume International Encyclopedia of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2008).
Dr. Viswanath has served and is continuing to serve on several national committees, including for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine. In recognition of his academic and professional achievements, Dr. Viswanath has received several awards, including the Postdoctoral Mentor of the Year Award from DFCI; the Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award for Excellence in Tobacco Research, American Society for Preventive Oncology; the Dale Brashers Distinguished Mentorship Award, National Communication Association; the Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award, jointly given out by the International Communication Association and the National Com-
munication Association; the Mayhew Derryberry Award from the American Public Health Association for his contribution to health education research and theory; and the College of Liberal Arts Alumnus of Notable Achievement, University of Minnesota. He delivered the 23rd Annual Aubrey Fisher Lecture at The University of Utah in 2009. He was elected as a fellow of the International Communication Association (2011), the Society for Behavioral Medicine (2008), and the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (2006).
Todd Wolynn, M.D., M.M.M., is the chief executive officer of Kids Plus Pediatrics. He received his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania and earned an M.M.M. from Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. He led clinical vaccine research at Kids Plus for 14 years, including more than 40 studies as both a sub-investigator and a principal investigator. His areas of focus for the past decade have been vaccine communication, patient/family engagement, and pediatricians as advocates. Dr. Wolynn has served in a variety of roles as a consultant and an advisor on vaccine-related projects in his practice, as well as with professional medical organizations, vaccine manufacturers, and other vaccine-related entities. In addition to his work with Kids Plus, he currently serves as the president of the advisory board of Shots Heard Round the World, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting, defending, empowering, and galvanizing vaccine advocates.
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