Ali S. Khan

Ali S. Khan is an American practicing physician and former Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (P.H.P.R.) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since July 20 ...Show More

Ali S. Khan is an American practicing physician and former Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (P.H.P.R.) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since July 2014, he has served as Dean of the College of Public Health and Retired assistant Surgeon General at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska.Khan's career began in 1991 when he joined CDC and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer. Dr. Khan has focused his career on bio-terrorism, global health, and emerging infectious diseases. While serving as the interim Director for C.D.C's global infectious disease activities, he designed C.D.C's joint global field epidemiology and laboratory training program. Dr. Khan helped design and implement the President's Malaria Initiative, a $1.2 billion, five-year project to reduce the burden of malaria and relieve poverty in Africa. He has also been engaged in polio and guinea worm eradication. Additionally, Khan proposed the BioPHusion program as a new public health initiative to improve knowledge exchange for all public health practitioners. BioPHusion was used during the H1N1 pandemic to identify emerging cases and plan response actions.Prior to becoming Director of P.H.P.R in August 2010, Dr. Khan served as Deputy Director of C.D.C's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (N.C.E.Z.I.D). He has responded to and led numerous domestic and international public health emergencies, including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, monkeypox, Rift Valley fever, avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the Asian tsunami, and the initial public health response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.In 2016 Khan published The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers (with William Patrick). In it he recounts some of his experiences responding to outbreaks all over the world, including many of those mentioned above. Besides his personal experiences, he also provides a great deal of background information for readers interested in public health and emerging diseases.Ali Khan received his Doctor of Medicine from the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, and completed a joint residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Michigan. He later went on to pursue a Masters of Public Health (M.P.H) from Emory University. Hide