Professor David Heymann, Chairman, Public Health England is currently Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London. Previously he was the World Health Organization's Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment, and Representative of the Director-General for polio eradication.
From 1998 to 2003 he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster during which he headed the global response to SARS, and prior to that was Director for the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases. Earlier experiences at WHO included Chief of Research Activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS.
Before joining WHO, Prof. Heymann worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (United States) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom). In 2009 he was appointed an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for service to global public health.
When I spoke recently at the first annual Public Health England conference, I described it as a very special conference. It was a special conference, I said, because it finally marked the completion of the public health family in England. …
