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The IDWeek 2021 Travel In The Time Of COVID: What’s Hot In Pre-travel was presented by both Lin Chen, MD, Director, Travel Medicine Center Associate and Cindy R. Friedman, MD, Branch Chief, Travelers’ Health, Division of Global Migration and Quarantine
CDC. Dr. Chen’s lecture, titled “Pre Travel Advice in the Time of COVID-19 in Immunosuppress Population” focuses on immunocompromised travelers and summarizing pretravel care. Dr. Friedman’s lecture, titled “Traveling in the Time of COVID-19” focuses on risk reduction and mitigation strategies and recommendations on public health.
Lin H. Chen, MD, FACP, FASTMH, FISTM, is Immediate Past President of the International Society of Travel Medicine (2019-2021). She is Director of the Travel Medicine Center at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Chen is a graduate of Harvard University and Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. She trained in Boston followed by Yale-New Haven Hospital before returning to the Boston area. She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and International Society of Travel Medicine.
She has directed the ISTM course, served on the Research Committee and the Board of Directors as a Counsellor. She served on the ASTMH Certificate Examination Committee and Education Committee and also on Work Groups of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Her editorial roles include the Journal of Travel Medicine, Current Infectious Disease Reports, Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and Infectious Diseases: A Geographic Guide. She served on past scientific program committees of International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases and ISTM Conferences. She is a site director for the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network and Global Travel Epidemiology Network. Her clinical research focuses on travelers’ health, including vector-borne diseases, immunizations, emerging infections, and cross-border healthcare.
Dr. Cindy Friedman is the chief of The Travelers’ Health Branch in the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She joined the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine in 2020 after leading CDC’s COVID-19 response Cruise Ship Task Force, helping navigate the safe disembarkation and repatriation of more than 250,000 passengers and crew including the repatriation of hundreds of American passengers aboard the Diamond Princess in Japan, as well as the quarantine of passengers aboard the Grand Princess in California.
Dr. Friedman came to CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer in 1995 after completing her Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Cornell University Medical College. She has over 25 years of experience working in a variety of Public Health positions, including as CDC’s liaison to The Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Anthrax bioterrorism response, as Medical Director for CDC’s Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work, and as the Lead of CDC’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System. Dr Friedman has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, served on several advisory boards and holds an adjunct faculty appointment at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband, two children, and four Scottish Terriers.