Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Attending Physician, Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Kristen A. Feemster, MD MPH MSPHR is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine at theUniversity of Pennsylvania

Dr. Feemster’s research interests include immunization delivery, domestic and international vaccine policy and infectious diseases surveillance.  She is especially interested in understanding the role of community and household characteristics in infectious disease transmission to inform the development of effective policies related to the prevention of pediatric infectious diseases.  Ongoing work includes vaccine acceptance among parents and immunization providers in Botswana and the Dominican Republic, interventions to improve Tdap vaccination among caregivers of young infants, neighborhood factors associated with the incidence of respiratory infections and health-care associated respiratory infection in the pediatric ambulatory setting.  She has collaborated with the Philadelphia Department of Health and the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention.  In addition to her research, Dr. Feemster is a senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn), a member of the Center for Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness and PolicyLab (CHOP) and a physician scientist with the Vaccine Education Center (CHOP).  She is a regular contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer public health blog and an advisory board member for Parents with Kids of Infectious Diseases (PKIDS).  She also serves on the Advisory Commission for Childhood Vaccines that advises the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. 

Seth Mnookin is the Co-Director of MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, won the National Association of Science Writers 2012 "Science in Society" Award and the New England chapter of the American Medical Writers Association's Will Solimene Award for Excellence. He is also the author of the 2006 New York Times bestseller

Since 2005, Seth has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he’s written about the American media presence in Iraq, Bloomberg News, and Stephen Colbert. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Smithsonian, New York, Wired, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Spin, Slate, and Salon.com. His blog on science, medicine, and media is part of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) Blog Network.

He graduated from Harvard College in 1994 with a degree in History and Science, and was a 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A native of Newton, Massachusetts, he and his wife currently live in Brookline, MA with their eight-year-old dog, their three-year-old son, and their year-old daughter.