Kathryn M. Edwards

Born: Unknown

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: White

Grinnell College Chemistry 1967; University of Iowa Pharmacology 1969; University of Iowa Medical School MD 1973

"“I’m very proud of participating in the evaluation, licensure, use and promotion of vaccines,” she said. “It’s a little painful for me to see hesitancy about vaccines now. I tell people that it’s a little like the Maytag repairman. We have such a good product that people kind of forget about what diseases there were. When I was growing up, we had polio, we saw it, and there was no question we would all get our polio vaccine. But people now don’t know about meningitis. They don’t know measles, so sometimes they question why a vaccine is needed.” (news.vumc.org); “I’m so proud of the people I’ve been able to mentor, of being their ‘academic parent.’ In some ways my transition is a little bit like biologic parenthood. We spend a lot of time trying to make sure our children get the wings to fly away and become their own independent people, and that’s what I hope has been the case with the people that I’ve mentored — that they’ve gotten their own wings and now they have their own programs and are carrying on traditions, but expanding in new ways and having new ideas.” (news.vumc.org/2023/); "I learned that it’s very important to engage the community in the research from the beginning — communicating with the community exactly what’s being studied, why it’s being studied, what this study will involve and what impact the study results will have. People need to understand what is happening." (knowablemagazine.org); "

— Kathryn M. Edwards

Field of Study: Public Health

Institution/Corporation: Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Degrees & Memberships: Member: 2008 National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America; Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society; World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Pertussis; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009);

Awards: 2006 IDSA Mentor Award; 2014 Maureen Andrews Mentoring Award, Society for Pediatric Research; 2016 Charles Mérieux Vaccinology Award, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases; 2018 Maxwell Finland Award for Scientific Accomplishments, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases; 2019 Frank Morriss Jr. Leadership Award in Pediatrics; 2020 John Howland Award, American Pediatric Society; 2020 Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame; 2023 Research.com Best Female Scientist Award; 2022 Research.com Best Female Scientist Award;

Achievements: internationally recognized for her countless contributions to vaccine evaluation and implementation, public health advocacy, and the mentorship and training of new generations of experts in infectious disease over the past four decades; has tested vaccines for H1N1 flu, H5 avian flu, pertussis, pneumococcus, smallpox, anthrax and others; initial studies focused on Haemophilus influenza Type b (Hib) vaccines, where she compared the safety and immunogenicity of four different Hib vaccines in large community pediatric practices and made important contributions to the licensing and universal recommendations for the Hib vaccine; was a founding investigator of the CDC-funded New Vaccine Surveillance Network, assessing the impact of vaccines on respiratory and diarrheal diseases in the United States; her group’s demonstration of the safety and effectiveness of both live and inactivated influenza vaccines in adults and children helped lead to recommendations that all children under 2 years of age should be immunized against flu each year;