Hubert-Yeargan Advisory Committee

Richard L. Guerrant, MD

Director, Center for Global Health, University of Virginia

Dr. Guerrant is author of over 420 scientific and clinical articles, reviews, and major textbook chapters, and editor of 6 books. He graduated from Davidson College and the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine, was trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Harvard Medical Service of the Boston City Hospital, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Johns Hopkins Hospital, and UVA, and has been elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Clinical and Climatological Association . He was recently elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and appointed to its Board on Global Health.

Dr. Guerrant has worked in the Congo, Bangladesh, and Brazil and started the Division of Geographic and International Medicine with Kellogg and Rockefeller support in 1978. Since then, he has recruited outstanding faculty, and his group has trained over 150 postdoctoral fellows and students who are becoming leaders in tropical medicine throughout the U.S. and abroad. Their numbers include over 70 postdoctoral trainees and colleagues from Brazil, Ghana, China, the Philippines, and South Africa who have returned to their home countries to become leaders in their respective institutions and develop models of sustained, productive, international collaboration.

Dr. Guerrant's research is focused on the recognition, diagnosis, pathogenesis, impact, and control of enteric infections and their consequences. He received the Smadel and Abbott Awards of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), chaired their committee that developed practice guidelines for management of diarrhea, was named Professor Honoris Causa at Unidad de Farmacologia Clinica (UFC), and received the Emilio Ribas Medal of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases in 1997. He has served on several editorial, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and World Health Organization advisory boards; U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs (VA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Sections; and Clark and Child Health Foundation Boards and chaired the U.S. Cholera Panel of the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program and the International Affairs Committee of the IDSA. He was Henderson Inventor of the Year in 1997 for his new glutamine derivative-based oral rehydration and nutrition therapy. Dr. Guerrant is also director of UVA's Office of International Health and has recently launched an entirely new university-wide Center for Global Health at UVA. In this role, he is expanding international opportunities for UVA students, faculty, and international fellows and is seeking endowed support to sustain this unique program.