Ayman El-Mohandes MBBCh, MD, MPH, FAAP | |
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Born | Guiza, Egypt |
Citizenship | United States |
Known for | Maternal and child health in underserved populations; COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy |
Title | Dean, City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy |
Spouse(s) | Hala El-Mohandes, Vice President of EXIM Bank USA (retired) |
Parents |
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Ayman El-Mohandes is an American epidemiologist and the dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy since 2013. He was the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center from 2009 to 2013. He is a pediatrician and specialist in neonatal medicine and infant mortality in minority populations. [1] El-Mohandes is an expert on vaccine hesitancy and acceptance. [2] [3]
Ayman El-Mohandes received his Doctor of Medicine from Cairo University Medical School. He received his Master of Public Health in epidemiology and biostatistics from George Washington University. [4]
Prior to joining the City University of New York, El-Mohandes was a founding faculty member of the George Washington University (GWU) School of Public Health and Health Services, now known as the Milken Institute School of Public Health, where he served as associate dean for research and later, chair of the Department of Prevention and Community Health. [5] He completed his training in pediatrics and neonatal medicine at DC Children's National Hospital, and was board certified in pediatric and neonatal medicine in 1985. He was an attending neonatologist and professor of pediatrics at George Washington. El-Mohandes went on to serve as the inaugural dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. [6] His primary research addressed maternal and child health, particularly in underserved communities. [7] [8]
From 1999-2003, El-Mohandes served as principal investigator of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Initiative to Reduce Infant Mortality in Minority Populations. [9] He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP), an elected Member of the American Society of Pediatrics (MASP), and a board member of the CUNY Research Foundation. [10]
Since 2020, El-Mohandes has focused his research interest on the population health impact of the COVID-19 epidemic and vaccine hesitancy worldwide. His work in this domain has appeared in Nature, The Lancet , and the American Journal of Public Health . [11] [12] [13] El-Mohandes is regularly consulted on this subject in the media. [14] [15] [16] He is the co-lead of the New York City Pandemic Response Institute. [17]
During 2022-2023, Ayman El-Mohandes was the chair of the Board of Directors for the Association of Schools and Programs in Public Health (ASPPH). [18]
Ayman El-Mohandes is co-chair of the governing board at the Pandemic Response Institute along with co-chair Wafaa El-Sadr, founder and director of ICAP at Columbia University. [19] El-Mohandes regularly appeared on media outlets for his expertise on COVID resurgence during the COVID pandemic [20] [21] and vaccine hesitancy. [22] [23]
In January 2024, Ayman El-Mohandes gave testimony before the Health, Finance, and Ways and Means Committees of the New York State Assembly on the executive budget proposal for health and Medicaid. [24]
In 2022, Ayman El-Mohandes co-authored a seminal article in Nature that brought together 386 experts from academia, governments, and NGOs. Experts represented 112 countries. Using the Delphi method, the study proposed 57 recommendations for ending the COVID pandemic and addressed inadequacies of the global response to the pandemic. [25] [26]
In 2021, Ayman El-Mohandes moderated a discussion on corporate impact on human and planetary health C-SPAN2's Book TV. The program featured book author and CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy distinguished professor Nicholas Freudenberg, food policy expert and professor emerita Marion Nestle and former New York City Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett. [27]
Ayman El-Mohandes was the recipient of the Milken Institute School of Public Health 950 Award in 2022. [5] He was the recipient of the APHA Executive Director Citation in 2017 for “extraordinary leadership and innovation in strengthening the Association’s membership and development efforts." [28] [29]
A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and recognize further and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.
Vaccine hesitancy is a delay in acceptance, or refusal, of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services and supporting evidence. The term covers refusals to vaccinate, delaying vaccines, accepting vaccines but remaining uncertain about their use, or using certain vaccines but not others. Although adverse effects associated with vaccines are occasionally observed, the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and effective is overwhelming. Vaccine hesitancy often results in disease outbreaks and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. Therefore, the World Health Organization characterizes vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten global health threats.
Peter Jay Hotez is an American scientist, pediatrician, and advocate in the fields of global health, vaccinology, and neglected tropical disease control. He serves as founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics. He also serves as a University Professor of Biology at Baylor University.
The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy is a public American research and professional college within the City University of New York (CUNY) system. The graduate school is located at 55 West 125th Street in New York City.
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Part of managing an infectious disease outbreak is trying to delay and decrease the epidemic peak, known as flattening the epidemic curve. This decreases the risk of health services being overwhelmed and provides more time for vaccines and treatments to be developed. Non-pharmaceutical interventions that may manage the outbreak include personal preventive measures such as hand hygiene, wearing face masks, and self-quarantine; community measures aimed at physical distancing such as closing schools and cancelling mass gathering events; community engagement to encourage acceptance and participation in such interventions; as well as environmental measures such surface cleaning. It has also been suggested that improving ventilation and managing exposure duration can reduce transmission.
The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium was a group of academic institutions and public health agencies in the United Kingdom created in April 2020 to collect, sequence and analyse genomes of SARS-CoV-2 at scale, as part of COVID-19 pandemic response.
Misinformation related to immunization and the use of vaccines circulates in mass media and social media in spite of the fact that there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination. Unsubstantiated safety concerns related to vaccines are often presented on the internet as being scientific information. A large proportion of internet sources on the topic are mostly inaccurate which can lead people searching for information to form misconceptions relating to vaccines.
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