Dr. Amler was appointed by New York’s governor in 2006 to chair the regional advisory council for the Berger Commission on hospital and long-term care utilization. He helped secure independent access for physical therapists in New York and has consulted for academic medical centers on clinical research support, graduate medical education, regional service integration, and disaster preparedness.
Dr. Amler previously was Regional Health Administrator, US Dept of Health and Human Services, where he secured supplemental SCHIP funding for Medicaid programs. He oversaw hospital emergency preparedness and directed federal medical emergency assets during heightened external threats to the region. As chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), he coordinated medical monitoring for anthrax response teams, launched a nationwide program to protect children from chemical hazards, established standardized environmental medicine biomarkers, and created a nationwide clinical network (Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units, PEHSU) that has since expanded to several other countries. He led CDC’s development of the evidence-based risk models for Health Risk Appraisal (HRA) that underlie standards used today by government, military, and industry. At NYMC, he secured funding to repurpose the Dana Road and Skyline facilities, oversaw growth of the physical therapy and speech-language pathology programs, and launched the Institute of Public Health which includes the Public Health Practice Council and centers of excellence in Disability and Health, Disaster Medicine, Environmental Health, and Long-Term Care.
A practicing physician, Dr. Amler is a graduate of Dartmouth College, New York University, UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, with residencies at Bellevue and at St. Lukes–Roosevelt. He is a Board member of the Westchester County Association, and Hudson Valley Economic Development Corporation; Fellow and former Chapter President of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, and New York Academy of Medicine. He was his medical school’s Distinguished Alumnus of the Year in 2005 and Keynote Lecturer in 2011. A co-founder of BioInc, the biotech incubator at NYMC, he received the Doctor of Distinction Award for Medical Entrepreneurship from the Westchester Business Journal and Medical Society, the Outstanding Service Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and in 2015 was named to City & State’s “Responsible 100: New York’s Most Outstanding Corporate Citizens.”
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