Overview:

Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat. Prevention tools, such as vaccines, are an effective tool to slow the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance and to save lives in the United States and around the world. Vaccines can help prevent infections from happening in the first place, thereby reducing use or misuse of antibiotics. Vaccines can also reduce infection duration or severity and reduce transmission of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. That’s why CDC and partners are committed to driving innovation to develop and deploy vaccines to help slow the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance.

What you will learn:

How vaccines can help slow the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance and can protect human health.
How CDC is working to understand the potential impact of new vaccines through population-based surveillance and electronic health record data analyses characterizing the burden of key healthcare-associated pathogens.
How vaccines can help combat the threat of antimicrobial resistance around the world, including through incorporation of vaccination strategies into antimicrobial resistance National Action Plans.

Anthony (Tony) Fiore, MD, MPH, FIDSA

Anthony (Tony) Fiore, MD, MPH, is a medical epidemiologist and infectious diseases physician. Currently, he is an independent consultant with HilleVax, Inc., providing literature and data reviews relevant to a norovirus vaccine being evaluated in clinical trials. Recently he completed a contract with the World Health Organization, aiding in developing guidelines and metrics for measuring the impact of vaccines on antibiotic resistance.

Before working as an independent consultant, Dr. Fiore spent 26 years working at CDC, the last six years being spent as Chief of the Epidemiology, Research, and Innovations Branch in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) in CDC’s National Center of Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. In this role, he collaborated on numerous projects aimed at preventing or reducing healthcare-associated infections and sepsis. He also worked on respiratory infections, viral hepatitis, and parasitic diseases.

Kristin Andrejko, PhD

Kristin Andrejko, PhD, is an Epidemiologist for the Respiratory Diseases Branch in the Division of Bacterial Diseases in CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Dr. Andrejko leads a portfolio of projects studying the epidemiology of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Additionally, she conducts studies evaluating the impact and effectiveness of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines and the burden of resistant streptococcal disease. She joined CDC in 2022 after completing her doctorate degree in epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Yonatan Grad, MD, PhD

Yonatan Grad, MD, PhD, is the Melvin J. and Geraldine L. Glimcher Associate Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Grad leads the Grad Lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which employs interdisciplinary employs interdisciplinary methods—including molecular microbiology, pathogen genomics, and mathematical modeling—to study how pathogens evolve and spread through populations, with the motivation of improving clinical and public health strategies to decrease the burden of disease. A major theme of the lab’s work is antimicrobial resistance, with a particular focus on Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea.

Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD, MPH

Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD, MPH, is founder and director of the One Health Trust (formerly known as the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy or CDDEP), a senior research scholar at Princeton University, and director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on Antimicrobial Resistance in New Delhi, India. Dr. Laxminarayan’s educational commitments include work as an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland and the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. He chairs the board of the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership. He is also founder and board chair at HealthCube. His previous experience includes serving on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s antimicrobial resistance working group, a voting member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance, a TED Talk presenter, and a series editor of the Disease Control Priorities for Developing Countries, 3rd edition.

Shelley Magill, MD, PhD

Shelley Magill, MD, PhD, is an infectious diseases physician, a medical officer in the U.S. Public Health Service and currently serves as the Deputy Chief for Science in the Division of DHQP Epidemiology, Research, and Innovations Branch, within CDC’s National Center of Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Dr. Magill’s work focuses on surveillance and epidemiology of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. She joined CDC in 2007 and began working in CDC’s DHQP in 2009.