Ali S Khan, MD, MPH, MBA
Richard Holland Presidential Chair
Dean, UNMC College of Public Health
Assistant Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service (retired)
Ali S. Khan, MD, MPH, MBA, is dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he also holds the endowed Richard Holland Presidential Chair. He is a retired U.S. assistant surgeon general and a former director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Khan received his medical degree 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 received a master's degree in public health from Emory University.
Dr. Khan’s federal career began in 1991 when he joined CDC and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer. He has focused his career on bioterrorism, global health equity, emerging infectious diseases and climate change. While serving as the interim Director of the CDC’s global infectious disease activities, he designed CDC’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 also has been engaged in polio and guinea worm eradication. Additionally, Dr. 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.
Dr. Khan’s initial work in emergency preparedness started in 1999 when he helped establish the CDC’s bioterrorism program, which upgraded local, state, and national public health systems to detect and rapidly respond to bioterrorism. As deputy director of the bioterrorism program, he created the Critical Agent list, which has remained the basis for all biological terrorism preparedness. Dr. Khan also published the first national public health preparedness plan, initiated syndrome based surveillance, and designed key focus areas to improve local and state capacities to respond to emergencies. He used these models during the first anthrax attack in 2001, during which he directed the CDC operational response in Washington, D.C.
Prior to becoming director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response in August 2010, Dr. Khan served as deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. He has responded to and ledresponse to numerous domestic and international public health emergencies, including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, monkeypox, Rift Valley fever, avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome, the Asian Tsunami, and the initial public health response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In May 2011, he made public the CDC's recommendations for preparing for a zombie apocalypse.