Peter Hotez

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)

Hotez leads an international team of scientists working to develop vaccines to combat hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, and other infectious and neglected diseases, including Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, and SARS.

Together with Philip K. Russell, Hotez founded the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative (HHVI) in 1999,. Hotez writes extensively about vaccine diplomacy, i.e., the opportunity of using vaccines as instruments of foreign policy and to promote global peace, especially among poor countries seeking nuclear weapons technology.

NTD policy and advocacy

Hotez is a global health advocate and policymaker in the area of neglected tropical diseases, with an emphasis on providing impoverished populations access to essential and existing medicines for neglected tropical diseases. His activities helped to promote the establishment of the Global Network for NTDs, which Hotez co-founded in 2006 Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (“Global Network”). As a result of these activities, and the effort of public-private partnerships and NGOs, today more than 250 million people are receiving essential medicines for neglected tropical diseases.

Hotez is the founding Editor-In-Chief of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Neglected Tropical Diseases, an online open access medical journal focused exclusively on neglected tropical diseases.

His papers in PLOS NTDs on the Geopolitics of NTDs provide a new framework for incorporating NTDs into U.S. foreign policy and helped to launch the concept known as vaccine diplomacy. Hotez also studies NTDs among the poor living in the U.S. and other developed countries. His 2008 PLOS NTDs paper on “Neglected infections in the United States of America” highlighted the hidden burden of NTDs in the American South while his 2012 op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Tropical Diseases: The New Plague of Poverty", emphasized the especially high burden of NTDs among the poor in Texas. His work cites a new global health framework based on extreme poverty regardless of whether it occurs in low- and middle-income countries or industrialized nations. Many of these concepts are articulated in his books Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases, published by ASM Press. and Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor Amid Wealth, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

In 2015, Prof. Hotez emerged as a major national thought leader on the Zika epidemic in the Western Hemisphere and globally. He was among the first to predict Zika’s emergence in the US and is called upon frequently to testify before US Congress, and served on infectious disease task forces for two consecutive Texas Governors. In addition, as both a vaccine scientist and autism Dad he has led national efforts to defend vaccines and as an ardent champion of vaccines going up against a growing national antivaccine movement. He appears frequently on television (including BBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), radio, and in newspaper interviews (including the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal). He is also a recognized authority on vaccines.

US science envoy

In December 2014 Hotez was named U.S. Science Envoy by the White House and State Department. In this role he served two years focusing on vaccine science diplomacy and joint vaccine development with countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Blue Marble Health

Hotez introduced the concept of Blue Marble Health to raise awareness of neglected tropical diseases and their disproportionate impact on the extreme poor living among the wealthiest G20 (Group of 20) countries, including 4–5 million people in the United States living on less than $2 a day. In subsequent policy papers, Hotez provided evidence that with some important exceptions most of the world's NTDs paradoxically affect populations living in G20 countries, especially in areas of concentrated poverty such as northern India, southern Mexico, western China, northeastern Brazil, and even the southern United States. This finding is in contrast to traditional global health views of developed vs. developing countries.

Baylor College of Medicine

Hotez' work among people with NTDs in Texas helped lead to the establishment of the National School of Tropical Medicine (NSTM) at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). It is the first school in the United States solely committed to addressing the world's most pressing tropical disease issues.

Personal life and education

Hotez was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He received a BA in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry magna cum laude (Phi Beta Kappa) from Yale University in 1980, a PhD from Rockefeller University in 1986, and a Doctorate in Medicine from Weill Cornell Medical College in 1987. His doctoral dissertation and postdoctoral training were in the area of hookworm molecular pathogenesis and vaccine development.

He obtained pediatric residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and postdoctoral training in clinical pediatric infectious diseases and molecular parasitology at Yale University School of Medicine. Prior to becoming founding Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Hotez was Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University previously and prior to that associate professor at Yale University School of Medicine.

Awards and memberships

Hotez has been awarded:

In 2008, he was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. He is an ambassador of the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (FAAP), a member of the World Health Organization Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee for WHO TDR (Special Programme on Tropical Diseases Research), and in 2011, Hotez was appointed as a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council of Councils. He is a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Publications and media

Hotez is the author of more than 400 scientific and technical papers on NTDs. In addition he is the author of Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases: The Neglected Tropical Diseases and Their Impact on Global Health and Development, co-author of Parasitic Diseases, 5th Edition, a co-editor of Krugman's Infectious Diseases of Children, 11th Edition, and co-editor of Manson's Tropical Diseases, 23rd Edition and Feigin and Cherry's Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, 7th Edition. In addition, Hotez writes frequently for lay audiences, including papers in Scientific American and op-ed pieces in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post. He has been interviewed on numerous national TV and news programs, such as CNN, NPR, Charlie Rose and PRI. He has also consulted for popular television shows that highlight tropical diseases, including House and Private Practice. He has also been interviewed for an article in Science & Diplomacy.

Selected scientific publications:

Selected op-eds: