Dr. Miriam Alter is the inaugural holder of UTMB’s Robert E. Shope Distinguished Professorship in Infectious Disease Epidemiology and will lead the development of a new program on infectious-disease epidemiology within the university’s Institute for Human Infections and Immunity (IHII).
 
Epidemiology is the branch of medical science that deals with the incidence, distribution and control of disease in a population.

Alter’s recruitment was supported by a $1.25 million STAR Award from the University of Texas System, which will be used to establish a molecular epidemiology core laboratory at UTMB. Her primary focus is bridging those disciplines and building a program that will add a new dimension to current UTMB strengths in the ecology of emerging infectious diseases, molecular virology and defense against bioterrorism

 

Alter originally trained for a career as a clinical nurse, but “fell in love with epidemiology,” she said, after taking a CDC training course in applied epidemiology as preparation for building a hospital infection control program. That passion led her to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University and drove her to ignore the advice of professors who told her that at the time—the mid-1970s—infectious-disease research was a dead end because funding had dried up. On her own, she obtained an FDA grant to study what was then known as “non-A, non-B hepatitis,” and is today called hepatitis C — a liver–destroying disease that currently affects 3.2 million Americans and back then was spreading quietly through blood transfusions and intravenous drug use, as well as accidental needlesticks in health-care settings and high-risk sexual behavior.

Alter continued her viral hepatitis research after joining the CDC, where she designed and carried out the first community-based study to follow the progression of illness among people newly infected with the hepatitis C virus. The study revealed for the first time the chronic nature of most hepatitis C virus infections. The author of a definitive series of epidemiological studies on the natural history and mechanisms of transmission of hepatitis B and C, Alter also served as the CDC’s main liaison to national and international groups created to deal with the problems posed by the viruses: finding ways to screen blood supplies, develop better diagnostic techniques, anti-viral agents and vaccines, and both manage disease in infected people and prevent the spread of the virus to uninfected populations.

In 2005, the American Public Health Association recognized Alter’s achievements at the CDC when it presented her with its John P. Snow Award for “distinguished service to the health of the public through contributions to epidemiology.” Alter received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of Blood Banks in 1999 and an appointment to the Senior Biomedical Research Service at the CDC in 1997 for her outstanding contributions to public health. Alter has also received four James H. Nakano Citations from the CDC for outstanding scientific papers published in 1996, 1997, 2002 and 2005, as well as the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service in 1998 for her team’s investigation of a multi-state outbreak of hepatitis A.