David Heymann 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.
From 2012 to March 2017 he was chairman of Public Health England, UK. Previously he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster, during which he headed the global response to SARS. Prior to this, he was director for the WHO programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases.
Earlier experiences at WHO include chief of research activities in the WHO global programme on AIDS. Before WHO he worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa, on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he participated in the first and second outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, and supported ministries of health in research aimed at better control of malaria, measles, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
He is an elected fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (US) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), and has been awarded several public health awards that have provided funding for the establishment of an on-going mentorship programme at the International Association of Public Health Institutes (IANPHI). In 2009 he was appointed an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for service to global public health.
