Susan Swedo, MD
Provider Outreach Chair, Professional Advisory Board
Susan Swedo, MD, is ASPIRE’s Provider Outreach chair, ex-officio Board Member. She is the Chief Science Officer for PANDAS Physicians Network. Dr. Swedo recently retired as the Chief of the Section on Behavioral Pediatrics at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). She remains designated as a Scientist Emeritus at the National Institute of Health. Dr. Swedo is a board-certified pediatrician; she received her M.D. from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and completed her pediatrics residency at Northwestern University’s Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Swedo began her career as a hospital-based pediatrician in Evanston, IL and was later named Chief of Adolescent Medicine at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University. In 1986, she joined the staff of the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Swedo and her NIMH team were the first to describe a post-infectious etiology for OCD and define criteria identifying the PANDAS subgroup. In 2002, Dr. Swedo moved to the extramural side of NIMH to serve as Associate Director for Pediatric Research and Director of the Division of Pediatric Translational Research. She returned to the Pediatrics & Developmental Neuroscience Branch in May 2006 to establish a multi-disciplinary, clinical research team focused on the diagnosis and treatment of childhood neuropsychiatric conditions, including Sydenham’s chorea, Tourette Syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Swedo has authored/co-authored over 100 research publications.