Dr. Harry Hannon has made many significant and lasting contributions in the advancement of public health laboratory science, particularly in improving and standardizing newborn screening methods. Chief among his accomplishments is the creation of the Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program (NSQAP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under his direction, this program has become an integral part of the newborn screening systems in the United States and around the world. The NSQAP serves as a center of expertise for all of the state public health laboratories, and more than 400 laboratories in the United States and 71other countries, by providing proficiency testing, training, reference materials and consultation services for the testing of newborns for preventable diseases.
Since the 1970s, Dr. Hannon has served on more than 40 scientific committees, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Academy of Sciences. His committee work with the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute has been instrumental in setting standards and guidelines for national health policies for laboratory procedures. He served as the CDC liaison to the APHL Newborn Screening & Genetics in Public Health Committee and is one of the key founders of what has become the APHL-sponsored Newborn Screening and Genetic Testing Symposium.
Dr. Hannon received his PhD from the University of Tennessee in Biochemistry in 1972 and did post-doctoral training at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories. His areas of expertise are immunochemistry, dried-blood spot technologies, newborn screening for metabolic disorders, and laboratory quality assurance systems. He has been awarded more than 35 awards nationally and internationally, including the Robert Guthrie Award presented by the International Society for Neonatal Screening and the PHS Superior Service Award given by the US Department of Health and Human Services. His publications number well over 200, and he has contributed many book chapters, abstracts and presentations covering a variety of topics in public health. For more than 30 years, Dr. Hannon has led the way in developing and improving newborn screening methods, preventing death and disability for millions of children.