APTR Announces Liaison to CDC Immunization Advisory Committee

APTR is pleased to announce that Richard Zimmerman, MD, MPH; Professor; University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has been appointed to represent APTR on the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Dr. Zimmerman was selected from a pool of highly qualified candidates who responded to the APTR Call to the membership in July. Liaison Representatives are non-voting and comment on ACIP’s recommendations as well as offer the perspectives of population health and preventive medicine. Dr. Zimmerman will also serve in an advisory capacity to the APTR-CDC Cooperative Agreement Projects funded by the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD).

Dr. Zimmerman is a tenured professor at the University of Pittsburgh with a primary appointment in the Medical School and secondary appointments in the School of Public Health and Clinical and Translational Science Institute. He practices part-time in a federally qualified, inner-city health center since 1991, where he co-leads COVID-19 efforts and serves on the quality assurance and ethics committees. Dr. Zimmerman is the Principal Investigator for the Pittsburgh teams for the CDC’s current multi-center outpatient US Flu Vaccine Effectiveness (VE) Network and for the inpatient HAIVEN study, both of which address the current epidemiology and clinical effectiveness of influenza and COVID-19 vaccines. He serves as an editorial board member of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and has been recognized for his previous work on the APTR Teaching Immunization in Medical Education (TIME) Project. 

Dr. Zimmerman’s main contributions to science include influencing vaccine policy deliberations, developing award-winning immunization education resources for professions, developing an award-winning clinical practice transformation program to increase vaccination rates, conducting vaccine trials, and leading the Pittsburgh sites for 2 of the CDC’s influenza vaccine effectiveness networks (which now address COVID-19). His team’s motto is “Protecting people: vaccine policy to practice.”

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is a federal advisory committee, composed of medical and public health experts, that provides advice and guidance to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the most effective means to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases in the United States. ACIP’s guidance includes the use of vaccines, and may also include recommendations for administration of immune globulin preparations and/or antimicrobial therapy shown to be effective in controlling a disease for which a vaccine is available. In addition, ACIP has a statutory authority for the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program; ACIP has sole responsibility and authority to determine the vaccines, number of doses, schedule and contraindications for the VFC program.