Staff Bio
Nicole Coffin, MA, is the Associate Director for Communication Science of the Public Health Infrastructure Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Role at CDC
In this role, Ms. Coffin guides strategy and implementation of communication across the center to strengthen the nation’s public health infrastructure.
Previous experience
Since 1999, Ms. Coffin has led a variety of communication efforts across CDC. She has most recently been CDC's Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, Partnership, and Policy in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. In that role she oversaw the strategic direction of the policy, partnership, and communications teams, ensuring consistent messaging and maximizing the interactions with CDC's internal and external partners for CDC's healthcare and patient safety portfolio.
In late 2022 and early 2023, Ms. Coffin was the acting Deputy Director of Communications for CDC. During CDC's COVID-19 Pandemic Response, she served in many leadership positions. Her work focused on vaccine safety, infection control in healthcare settings, a rehaul of CDC's community guidelines, and distribution of vaccines in nursing homes. Ms. Coffin has led policy and communications for CDC's Antibiotic Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit, including CDC communications for the White House Antibiotic Stewardship Forum, the launch of the National Action Plan to Combat Antibiotic Resistance, and CDC's Antibiotic Resistance Solutions Budget Initiative.
She began her career as a Presidential Managment Fellow in the CDC Office of the Director, Division of Media Relations, as a spokesperson for infectious diseases, bioterrorism, and chronic disease. Ms. Coffin is a media relations and crisis communications expert, playing a lead role in numerous national outbreak responses, including the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, emergence of West Nile virus in the U.S., SARS field teams, Ebola, and the multi-state outbreak of fungal meningitis due to contaminated steroid shots.