Global-health Leader

Michael H. Merson, an internationally recognized expert in the study of HIV/AIDS and the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of public health at Yale University, has been named director of Duke's newly created Global Health Institute.

The institute, which will incorporate several fields, aims to promote interdisciplinary education, research, and delivery of care to address health gaps between the poor and the affluent.

From 1978 to 1995, Merson worked for the World Health Organization (WHO), directing its Diarrheal Diseases Control Program for ten years and then moving on to head its Acute Respiratory Infections Control Program. Beginning in 1990, he headed the worldwide effort to control the AIDS epidemic as director of WHO's Global Program on AIDS.

Merson was appointed dean of public health at the Yale School of Medicine in 1995, and currently serves as director and principal investigator of Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS. He has written more than 175 articles and is senior editor of International Public Health, the first textbook prepared on the subject.