Professor David Heymann is an Associate Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. Dr David Heymann is Head and Senior Fellow of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London; Chairman of the Health Protection Agency, UK and Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Previously he was the World Health Organization's Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment and the representative of the Director-General for polio eradication. From 1998-2003 he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster and from October 1995 to July 1998 he was Director of the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases. Prior to that he was the Chief of research activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS.
Before joining WHO, Dr 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). In this capacity he supported ministries of health in designing and implementing programmes in infectious disease prevention and control. Prior to that he worked in India for two years as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme.
He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academies and the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom); and has been awarded the 2004 Award for Excellence of American Public Health Association, the 2005 Donald Mackay Award from the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and the 2007 Heinz Award on the Human Condition. In 2009 he was appointed an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to global public health. He is currently the editor of the 19th edition of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, a joint publication of the American Public Health Association and WHO.