Past event
American Alumni Lecture 2023: Professor Dame Anne Johnson 'Building Health Security, Locally and Globally'
Professor David Crossman CBE, Dean of Medicine and Head of School, will be hosting the American Alumni Lecture with guest speaker, Professor Dame Anne Johnson DBE PMedSci.
Dame Anne has been President of the Academy of Medical Sciences since December 2020, and has had a distinguished career in epidemiology and public health, focusing on topics such as HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, influenza, and diagnostics for infectious diseases.
She trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge and University of Newcastle, undertaking general practice training in Northumbria before completing a Masters in Epidemiology and Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In the mid 1980s she joined Middlesex Hospital – later part of University College London (UCL) – at the start of the 1980s HIV epidemic, subsequently directing the Medical Research Council UK Centre for coordinating epidemiological studies of HIV/AIDS. In 1990 she was funded to complete the UK's first National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles by Wellcome, work that has been repeated every ten years and continues to inform key policy on sexual health around the world. In 2010, she co-founded UCL's cross-disciplinary Institute for Global Health and has many overseas collaborations.
Dame Ann has served on many national and international advisory boards, is a former Governor of the Wellcome Trust and former member of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the UK Climate Change Committee. She is currently Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London and Co-Director of UCL Health of the Public. She is a member of the Royal Society's Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE) group, a member of the SAGE transmission subgroup and Chair of the UK Committee for Strategic Coordination of Health of the Public Research (SCHOPR).
Dame Anne was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001. Between 2014and 2016 she chaired the Academy of Medical Sciences Health of the Public 2040 Working Group and from 2018 to 2020 served as the Academy's Vice-President (International). She was at the forefront of the Academy's response to COVID-19, including the development of the Academy report Preparing for a challenging winter 2020-21.