Patricia L. Hibberd, MD, PhD

Biography

Dr. Patricia Hibberd, MD, PhD is the Chair of Global Health in the Boston University School of Public Health. Dr. Hibberd is also a professor of Global Health for the BUSPH and professor of Medicine in Infectious Diseases for the BUSM. Prior to her positions at Boston University, Dr. Hibberd was professor of Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and served as director of the Division of Global Health in the Department of Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received a BSc (honors) from King’s College, London, and a PhD degree in information science/epidemiology from Leicester University in 1978. She came to the US in 1980 as an epidemiologist researcher and obtained an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1986. Dr. Hibberd trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She has had leadership roles in infectious diseases, epidemiology, clinical research, and global health at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Tufts Medical Center/Tufts University School of Medicine. She was also a General Clinical Research Center program director while she was at Tufts.

Dr. Hibberd is a practicing infectious disease consultant who also leads a clinical and translational research program focusing on the prevention and treatment of childhood pneumonia, neonatal sepsis, and diarrhea—the leading killers of children under age 5 worldwide. She has worked in India for 20 years, and her research in India has been funded by NIH/NICHD’s Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research since 2008. She is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Malawi and by Saving Lives at Birth in Pakistan for the development of novel point of care diagnostics for pneumonia in young children. One of her passions is mentorship and fostering the development of the next generation of global health leaders—these include undergraduate, public health, and medical students, residents, fellows, and junior faculty. Dr. Hibberd is also a Paul G. Rogers Society Ambassador for Global Health Research and is currently chair of the Data and Safety Monitoring Board for the CDC’s STRIVE Trial, testing one of the vaccines (rVSV-ZEBOV) to prevent Ebola in Sierra Leone. She has published more than 300 articles, chapters, and books and serves on advisory boards to many US and international organizations.