Judd L. Walson

Judd L. Walson, MD, MPH, serves as the Robert E. Black Chair in International Health and Professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he chairs the Department of International Health. An infectious disease physician and epidemiologist with dual training in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Infectious Diseases, Walson has extensive experience in research, public health programming, policy development, product development, and clinical practice focused on low- and middle-income settings.

• MD, Tufts University School of Medicine (2000)
• MPH, Tufts University School of Medicine (2000)
• BA, Pitzer College (1993)

Walson's research focuses on interventions to improve child survival, growth, and development in Africa and South Asia. His work spans child and adolescent health, child mortality, diarrheal diseases, epidemiology, global health, infectious diseases including malaria, maternal child health, and neglected tropical diseases. He collaborates extensively with ministries of health, NGOs, and academic partners across Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, and Uganda.

His recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on child mortality, diarrheal diseases, soil-transmitted helminths, and antimicrobial resistance, with significant contributions to understanding risk stratification for acutely ill children in resource-limited settings. Walson's work frequently employs innovative approaches including machine learning for mortality prediction and high-throughput diagnostics for parasitic infections.

Walson co-leads the Childhood Acute Illness and Nutrition (CHAIN) Network, a collaboration across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia that has developed strategies to reduce mortality among acutely ill children. He also leads the DeWorm3 study, a large community cluster randomized trial focused on eliminating soil-transmitted helminths that has enrolled over 360,000 individuals in Benin, Malawi, and India. His research has informed improvements in global health policy and programs, with particular emphasis on product development across vaccines, diagnostics, and devices.

Walson maintains active research teams working on multiple continents, with particular expertise in field implementation of complex interventions in challenging environments. His work bridges clinical medicine, epidemiology, and public health implementation to address critical gaps in child survival and development in resource-limited settings worldwide.