2007 Payne Lecture: Infectious Diseases Across Borders: Public Health Security in the 21st Century

Dr. David Heymann is the Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases and Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication. From July 1998 until July 2003, he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster. Dr. Heymann was Director of the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases from October 1995 to July 1998, and prior to that was the Chief of research activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS. Before joining WHO, Dr. Heymann worked for thirteen years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He also worked for two years in India as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme.

Dr. Heymann holds a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. from Wake Forest University, a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has completed practical epidemiology training in the two-year Epidemic Intelligence Service of CDC. In 2004, he received the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence and was named to the United States Institute of Medicine. In 2005, he was awarded a Welling Professorship at the George Washington University School of Public Health and the 2005 Donald Mackay medal by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.