Fellows Profile: Margaret A. Hamburg

Margaret A. Hamburg, MD

Washington, DC

NYAM is pleased to congratulate one of its own Fellows, Margaret "Peggy" Hamburg, MD, on her nomination to serve as FDA Commissioner, which was made public March 11th. Dr Hamburg has been a Fellow of NYAM since 1991 and was honored in 2002 as the speaker for the Duncan Clark Lecture, an event spotlighting pertinent public health topics of the day.

"Peggy Hamburg has been an active Fellow here and a friend of the Academy," said Jo Ivey Boufford, President of NYAM. "I have long admired her outstanding career in public health and emergency preparedness and having a public health professional of her caliber lead an agency so critical to the public’s health is very exciting. We are proud to call her one of our own!"

The Hamburg family has a long association with The New York Academy of Medicine. Peggy Hamburg is the daughter of NYAM Trustee, David Hamburg, MD, a Fellow since 2000 and his wife Beatrix Hamburg, MD, elected Fellow in 1990. NYAM honored Dr David Hamburg, former Director of the Institute of Medicine, with the 2003 John Stearns Award for Lifetime Achievement in Medicine.

Dr Peggy Hamburg is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and is a trained internist. She became New York's acting health commissioner in 1991 after just one year as deputy commissioner. A year later she was given the job permanently at 36 — the youngest in New York's history. She then served as assistant secretary of planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services under the Clinton administration.

Hamburg's career has focused on public health, bio-defense and disease control, and has been credited with the substantial reduction in tuberculosis rates and increase in childhood immunizations during her tenure as health commissioner. She is currently a top scientist at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a group founded by Ted Turner to reduce the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction.

Specialty:
Internal Medicine