Amber Bickford Cox, Ph.D., MPH
Senior Director, Public Health
Dr. Cox is a Senior Director with Maximus Public Health with more than 20 years of experience in US and global public health with a focus on infectious disease epidemiology, clinical vaccine trials and policy research, and teaching to diverse academic and workforce audiences. Her research has focused on current and historical public health policies and the changing epidemiological and policy landscape of mandatory school immunization laws in the US. Dr. Cox leads Maximus' workforce development efforts and delivers public health solutions to state, local, and federal clients.
Dr. Cox was most recently a policy researcher and advisor to Merck & Co.’s Global Vaccine Policy Team, contributing to the preparedness planning for the Ebola vaccine development program and advising U.S. and International policy teams on childhood and adult immunization policy.
Prior to this, she spent 13 years at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and eight years at the Johns Hopkins Center for Immunization Research — conducting, managing, and monitoring phase I and phase II clinical vaccine and infectious disease challenge trials for new and experimental interventions like experimental HIV and malaria vaccines, ETEC challenge studies, and pandemic influenza vaccines. She served as the Project Coordinator for the Clinical Vaccine Trials Training Program providing novel ICH GCP training workshops in the U.S., Africa, Asia, and Europe for clinical trial sites conducting HIV epidemiology and vaccine studies.
Dr. Cox also served as a member of the faculty in the Department of International Health, Global Disease Epidemiology and Control Program while at Johns Hopkins. She was co-instructor for the Vaccine Science and Policy Certificate program. She served as the senior program manager for the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative, a project that successfully increased collaborative, educational, and interdisciplinary vaccine research within the global vaccine ecosystem. She planned and organized the annual Johns Hopkins Vaccine Day faculty and student research conference from 2009-2014. For five years, Dr. Cox was the co-instructor of the Clinical Vaccine Trials and Good Clinical Practices (GCP) course, and in 2012 brought the clinical vaccine trials course to the initial online public offering of Coursera — enrolling over 11,000 students in the first platform offering massive online open courses (MOOCs) in the United States.
Prior to her time at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Cox worked in reproductive healthcare and advocacy and was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa where she designed and implemented trainings with local non-governmental organizations and the CDC to reduce community HIV transmission.
Dr. Cox holds a Doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a master’s degree in Public Health with a focus on Complex Emergency Situations from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a Bachelor of Arts in African History from Smith College, Northampton MA.
