LCDR Amy Peterson, DVM, PhD biography

LCDR Amy Peterson, DVM, PhD

LCDR Amy Peterson received her degree in veterinary medicine in 2001 from Tufts University’s School of Veterinary Medicine, and practiced clinical veterinary medicine in a mixed large and small animal practice in Connecticut for a few years. In 2004 she began a Ph.D. in infectious disease epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2010, she joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program and became a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service. As an EIS officer, LCDR Peterson was assigned to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to assist in infectious disease surveillance and outbreak preparedness and response. She was also a temporary field veterinary medical officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the 2001 response to the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the United Kingdom, and has completed training and certification in foreign animal disease recognition and in veterinary preventive medicine. LCDR Peterson is currently a veterinary epidemiologist and team lead of the Epidemiology Response Team for the Division of Integrated Biosurveillance at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center in Silver Spring, MD.  In November 2014 she deployed to Liberia as part of the Monrovia Medical Unit Team 2, a US Public Health Service run Ebola Treatment Unit. She has expertise in preventive medicine, antibiotic resistance, environmental sampling methods, zoonotic disease epidemiology, disease surveillance methods, and in outbreak investigation and response.