FRED LOWE SOPER, DrPH ‘25, MPH ’23 (1893-1977), a world authority on yellow fever, was associated with the Rockefeller Foundation for 30 years, ending as the regional director for Africa and the Middle East. He also directed the bureau now known as the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Americas. He lived in Brazil with his wife JULIET for 23 years, and is credited with eliminating the malaria vector, A. Gambia, from Brazil and Egypt. He received the first Lasker Award in 1946 “for his splendid organization of eradication campaigns against yellow fever and malaria which have set new standards in the fight to defeat these diseases.” Throughout his long and distinguished career, Dr. Soper was an ardent advocate of disease eradication; his work touched the lives of inhabitants on five continents.
Held by Albert Wu
ALBERT W. WU, MD, MPH, is the Fred and Julie Soper Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Dr. Wu is a practicing general internist who joined the Bloomberg School in 1990. He is a leader in the field of health services research studying the impact of safety problems on patients and health care workers. Dr. Wu was among the first researchers to measure quality of life outcomes in people with HIV and co-founded the Outcomes Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group of the NIH ACTG. Dr. Wu developed the MOS-HIV Health Survey, a leading measure of health-related quality of life for people with HIV that is used widely in international trials and research studies.
Dr. Wu was senior adviser for WHO Patient Safety (2007-2009) and director of the Center for Meaningful Measures at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (2017-2022). He also directed the AHRQ Johns Hopkins DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness) Center from 2006-2014. Since 2011, he has served as director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research (CHSOR). He was interim chair of Health Policy and Management (2021-2022). He directs the Masters of Applied Science in Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality, and is editor in chief of Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management. He was elected to the Delta Omega Public Health Honorary Society in 2012, was awarded the Stebbins Medal in 2016 and the AHRQ John Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award in 2019, and was named a 2021 COVID-19 Hero by The Daily Record.
Dr. Wu received his MD from Cornell University Medical College in 1984 and his Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UC San Francisco, and is Board certified in Internal Medicine.
