Robert A. Hahn (born 1945) is an American medical anthropologist and epidemiologist. he was a coordinating scientist of systematic reviews for the Guide to Community Preventive Services at the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the National public health institutes, national public health agency of the United States. It is a Federal agencies of the United States, United States federal agency under the United S ...

(CDC).

Education

The son of German refugee parents, Hahn received his B.A. from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

in 1966, his PhD in anthropology from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1976, and his MPH in epidemiology from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

in 1986.

Career

Hahn began his career working at the CDC in 1986 and has remained there ever since. While there, he helped found the Behavioral and Social Science Working Group. From 1998 to 1999, he worked as a fellow in the

United States House Committee on Veterans' Affairs The standing committee, standing Committee on Veterans' Affairs in the United States House of Representatives oversees agencies, reviews current legislation, and recommends new Act of Congress, bills or amendments concerning U.S. military veteran ...

and in the office of Congresswoman

Louise Slaughter Dorothy Louise Slaughter (née McIntosh, August 14, 1929 – March 16, 2018) was an American politician elected to 16 terms as a United States representative from New York, serving from 1987 until her death in 2018. Slaughter was born in Lynch, ...

. As of 2015, he was also a member of the

Senior Biomedical Research Service Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to: * Senior (name), a surname ...

Research

As a coordinating scientist of systematic reviews in the CDC's Guide to Community Preventive Services, Hahn has published reviews on subjects such as excessive alcohol consumption and violence prevention, as well as interventions to promote

health equity Health equity arises from access to the social determinants of health, specifically from wealth, power and prestige. Individuals who have consistently been deprived of these three determinants are significantly disadvantaged from health inequiti ...

. He has also done research on the

nocebo effect A nocebo effect is said to occur when a patient's expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would have. For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can experience that ...

, and has said that one reason the medical community has been hesitant to research it because belief is not very highly valued in the modern medical community, which tends to focus more on

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

Honors and awards

Hahn received the Career Achievement Award by the

Society for Medical Anthropology A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soc ...

in 2012. He also received the Lifetime Contribution Award from the CDC's Behavioral and Social Science Working Group in 2013 for his work in founding the group.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hahn, Robert Alfred 21st-century American anthropologists Living people 1945 births American epidemiologists Centers for Disease Control and Prevention people Medical anthropologists Cornell University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni University of Washington School of Public Health alumni