Amanda Cohn
Education
Cohn is board certified in Pediatrics and is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.1)
She attended Brown University where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English.2) She obtained her medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine and completed a residency in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center in Massachusetts.3) 4)
Career and Affiliations
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Cohn is the Director of the Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders under the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).5) In this role, she acts as a liaison representative on the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), responsible for approving COVID-19 vaccines in Canada.6)
She previously served as Executive Secretariat of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and Chief Medical Officer for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD).7)
Prior to that role, she served as the Acting Director for the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and Deputy Director for Immunization Services Division for NCIRD.8) 9) Dr. Cohn came to the CDC in 2004 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and joined the Meningitis and Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch in 2006, where she focused on prevention and control meningococcal disease, both domestically and internationally. From 2007 to 2014, she was the CDC lead for the ACIP Meningococcal Vaccines Work Group.
She is the recipient of the CDC 2009 Iain Hardy Memorial Award for “outstanding contributions to vaccine-preventable diseases.”10)
U.S. Public Health Service
Cohn is a Commander in the US Public Health Service.11)
Forum on Microbial Threats
Cohn has participated numerous times on the planning committee for the Forum on Microbial Threats, chaired by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak.12) 13)
Research
Vaccines
Cohn has co-authored research on meningococcal vaccines.14)
COVID-19
Cohn was a co-author on the study identifying the first SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States, published in March 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine.15)