Saad Omer

Saad B. Omer is an American vaccinologist and infectious disease epidemiologist. He is the Founding Dean of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He is also a Professor in the O’Donnell School of Public Health and holds the Lyda Hill Deanship of the School of Public Health at UT Southwestern.

He was previously the inaugural Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. He was also a Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at Yale School of Medicine and the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health.

In 2009, he received the Maurice R. Hilleman Early-Stage Career Investigator Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. His research on vaccination rates, exemptions, and outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases has been widely covered in the media  On March 5, 2019, he testified at a US Senate hearing on vaccines, stating that preventing the next potential resurgence of measles will require a broad-based federal response to improve vaccine access.

He has published widely in biomedical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Pediatrics, American Journal of Public Health, and Science. Moreover, he has written op-eds for publications such as the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post.