Medical Epidemiologist, Division of Viral Diseases, Respiratory Virus Branch
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Summary
This presentation will provide an overview of how CDC works with state and local health departments to rapidly answer important and timely epidemiologic questions related to COVID-19/SARS-Cov-2 and support the overall public health response. I will review the current status of the pandemic, the key roles CDC plays in the public health response, and then share examples of how field epidemiology studies are designed and implemented to address important questions.
Bio
Hannah Kirking, MD, is a medical epidemiologist in the Division of Viral Diseases at the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She serves as team lead for the Outbreak, Response, and Prevention Team in the Respiratory Virus Branch. Her team works to do epidemiologic investigations in conjunction with state and local health departments and other partners. The goal of these investigations is to prevent infections or assist in responding to outbreaks of respiratory viruses. Hannah also provides technical assistance.
Hannah is currently deployed to CDC’s COVID-19 Response on the Epidemiology Task Force, as a co-lead of the Epidemiology Studies Team. She has been working to improve understanding of the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Hannah participated in the case and contact investigations of the earliest US cases of COVID-19, has served as principle investigator for several field investigations, and is currently working on several field epidemiology investigations to better understand infection and transmission in specific settings as well as in children.
Hannah is a Lieutenant Commander in the US Public Health Service. In addition to her work at CDC, she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine; she works clinically as a medicine hospitalist in Atlanta and teaches both Morehouse School of Medicine and Emory University medical students and residents. She is dual board-certified in internal medicine and pediatrics.