Al Sommer graduated from Harvard Medical School, after which he served as an EIS officer of CDC, based, with his family, in Bangladesh. While there he became interested in public health, publishing papers on the epidemiology of cholera, disaster relief following a cyclone that killed 250,00 people, and the control of smallpox. He returned to the States to receive an MHS in epidemiology and fulfill a residency in Ophthalmology. He and his family then moved to Indonesia to study the clinical manifestations and treatment of vitamin A deficiency, where he made his startling discovery that even mild vitamin A deficiency dramatically increases a child’s risk of dying, which led to the present, global, vitamin A distribution program that is estimated to save the sight and lives of half a million children a year. As a professor of Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins, he published critical articles on the early diagnosis of glaucoma, and the epidemiology of eye disease in Baltimore. In 1990, Sommer was appointed Dean of what was then the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Over the 15 years of his deanship, the School became the “Bloomberg School of Public Health”, the endowment and number of faculty more than tripled, its space more than doubled, and it was recognized as the leading school of public health by USNWR (a position it has held ever since). Sommer has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the Lasker Clinical Research Award.
Learn more about the Outstanding Achievement in Public Health Awards, generously supported by Johnson & Johnson.