Martin W. Bloem

MARTIN W. BLOEM, MD, PhD, is the inaugural Robert S. Lawrence Professor and current director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He joined the Center in 2017, after 12 years as a senior nutrition adviser at the United Nations World Food Programme and as a Global Coordinator for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

At the Center, he is guiding research, education and practice activities to adopt a broad, global view of food systems problems, emphasizing the needs of undernourished, low-income populations. He sees CLF’s work as a bridge between the scientific world and the food systems world, emphasizing practice—programs, marketing, advocacy, implementation and translation. Above all, he emphasizes that the Center’s research be relevant to real-world problems such as climate change. As CLF’s director, he looks forward to developing innovative collaborations and exploring how collaborations across many sectors, including industry, can contribute to positive food system change.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Martin earned his medical degree from the University of Utrecht and his doctorate in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maastricht. His career includes posts spanning academia, government and nongovernmental organizations in the Netherlands, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Singapore and, most recently, Italy. He has co-authored and co-edited seven books and more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles.