Rate My Professor Alfred Sommer

Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS, is a University Distinguished Service Professor, Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Professor of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He served as Dean of the Bloomberg School from 1990 to 2005 and is Dean Emeritus. An inaugural Johns Hopkins University Gilman Scholar, he earned a B.S. from Union College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1967, and an M.H.S. in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins in 1973. Sommer founded the Dana Center for Preventive Ophthalmology and has chaired scientific and advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health, World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Economic Forum, and American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Sommer's pioneering field research in Indonesia from 1976 to 1980 and in Africa demonstrated that vitamin A deficiency not only causes xerophthalmia and blindness but also markedly increases childhood mortality from infectious diseases such as measles and diarrhea by impairing immune function. His landmark randomized controlled community trials established that periodic high-dose vitamin A supplementation dramatically reduces child mortality, findings that prompted WHO and UNICEF to launch global supplementation programs averting millions of deaths annually. Additional studies showed vitamin A or beta-carotene supplementation reduces maternal mortality by 45 percent among Nepalese women of childbearing age and neonatal mortality by 20 percent. His research portfolio includes the Baltimore Eye Survey on glaucoma epidemiology and racial variations in blindness, cost-benefit analyses of blindness prevention strategies, micronutrient interventions for child survival, clinical guidelines, and outcomes assessment at the interface of medicine and public health. Author of six books and more than 300 peer-reviewed articles, key publications include "Impact of vitamin A supplementation on childhood mortality: a randomised controlled community trial" (The Lancet, 1986), "Racial variations in the prevalence of primary open-angle glaucoma: the Baltimore Eye Survey" (JAMA, 1991), and "Vitamin A deficiency: health, survival, and vision" (Oxford University Press, 1996). Among numerous honors, he has received the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award (1997), Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research (2004), Dan David Prize (2013), Prince Mahidol Award (1997), Helmut Horten Medical Research Award (1997), Warren Alpert Foundation Prize (2003), and Lucien Howe Medal (2003). Sommer has delivered over 70 named lectureships, including the Jackson Memorial Lecture, Duke Elder Oration, and Dohlman Professor Lecture.