Margaret (Peggy) Honein, PhD, MPH

Chief, Birth Defects Branch, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities

Margaret (Peggy) Honein, PhD, MPH is an epidemiologist and Chief of the Birth Defects Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and was credentialed as a Distinguished Consultant/Senior Scientist at the CDC in 2010. Dr. Honein received her B.S. degree in Biology from the University of California, Riverside in 1986, her M.P.H. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1992, and her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from UCLA in 1995. Dr. Honein’s research interests include understanding the role of smoking in birth defects, assessing the safety or risk of medication use and vaccine use during pregnancy, evaluating the impact of infections during pregnancy, and examining longer term outcomes and costs associated with congenital heart defects and other birth defects across the lifespan.