Bio
In a city of nearly 8.5 million people in a globalized world, being on the alert for communicable disease is vital. Dr. Annie Fine is responsible for tracking and analyzing data from doctors, medical institutions and laboratories, and detecting and responding to outbreaks on 73 communicable diseases. “Annie has amazing disease detective skills. She has a never-ending passion for solving macro health problems of a complex city, and an uncanny ability to identify issues and see the bigger picture,” says one colleague. When a curious outbreak of unexplained encephalitis, initially thought to be caused by the St. Louis encephalitis virus, hit New York, Dr. Fine was one of the first to question the diagnosis based on inconsistencies in the initial laboratory results as well as increasing reports from the public on clusters of dead birds being found in the areas most affected by the outbreak. Several weeks later, when the outbreak was correctly identified as due to the West Nile Virus, Dr. Fine created a surveillance and control plan for the city which became a model for other states and cities as the virus spread nationwide. During the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, Dr. Fine played a key role in measuring the disease’s severity and the increased risk for the elderly as well as pregnant women. To improve the Bureau’s disease surveillance and outbreak data management, Dr. Fine led the development of a new software system which analyzes thousands of reports and tests by neighborhood, age, seasonality and local institutions to identify complex trends hidden in the data. Dr. Fine’s outstanding innovations are motivated by the concern she has for the families and communities she protects. Says Dr. Fine, “I’m fundamentally a civil servant. To me that means trying to approach a set of ideals: caring, hard work, devotion and diligence.”
