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Distinguished Professor of the Practice; Director, IDEA Initiative, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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Anthony D. So, MD, MPA, is Distinguished Professor of the Practice and Founding Director of the Innovation+Design Enabling Access (IDEA) Initiative. Based in Health Systems in the Department of International Health, the IDEA Initiative fosters innovation and the design of systems that better enable access and impact of health technologies, particularly for those in need from disease and disadvantage. The IDEA Initiative also currently serves as the Secretariat for the Antibiotic Resistance Coalition, comprised of civil society groups and the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank of 55 developing countries. Professor So also chairs the School’s Graduate Medical Education Committee supporting its medical residency programs in occupational and environmental medicine and general preventive medicine.
Addressing these issues through the lens of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), Professor So has served as Co-Convener of the UN Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, delivering its recommendations to the UN Secretary-General in 2019; contributed to the Lancet Infectious Diseases Commission on Antibiotic Resistance and the Chatham House Working Group on New Business Models for Antibiotics; and was part of the Antibiotic Resistance Working Group of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors in Science and Technology. His research on reengineering how antibiotics are brought to market has been supported under a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. Taking a One Health approach, he was one of the lead authors of UNEP’s global spotlight report on the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance in 2023. For this work, Professor So received the Bloomberg School’s 2024 Faculty Award for Excellence in International Public Health Practice.
Professor So’s research and policy work has also contributed to discussions of equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines; pharmaceutical innovation and access; and innovative financing, including the role of product development partnerships in bringing health technologies to market. Along these lines, he has served in various advisory capacities, from the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Accelerating Rare Diseases Research and Orphan Product Development to the Advisory Council for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. He had co-chaired a technical working group on "Aligning pharmaceutical incentives to achieve fair pricing" for the 2021 WHO Fair Pricing Forum, served on the Technical Advisory Group of the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, and currently sits on WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Market Access for Vaccines. He had been a member of the Expert Advisory Group of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines and has developed analyses on strengthening LMIC R&D systems for a WHO-Uniting Efforts project and on a regional approach to ensuring vaccine access for a UN Economic Commission of the Asia Pacific-WHO project.
Throughout his career, he has studied a range of issues across globalization and health, from tobacco control in low- and middle- income countries to innovation and access to health technologies and food systems. Prior to joining Hopkins, Dr. So served as Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and served as Director of the Duke Program on Global Health and Technology Access, where he also led the Global Health Fellows program track that placed and trained students in Geneva-based summer internships and the inaugural Pharmaceutical Policy Leadership in Medicine Institute in partnership with the American Medical Student Association.
Before this, he served as an associate director for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Health Equity Program, where he launched initiatives on tobacco control in countries in Southeast Asia and shaped the foundation’s work on access to medicines policy in developing countries, including the strategy to lower the prices of patented HIV/AIDS drugs. His grant-making helped to seed the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance, the WHO-Health Action International Medicine Prices Project, the People’s Health Movement and the first World Report on Violence and Health. Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. So served as Senior Advisor to the Administrator at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), where he received the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award for shepherding the AHCPR Liaison Office for Quality and its efforts in support of the President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry and the Consumer Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. From 1995-96, he had served as Secretary Donna Shalala’s White House Fellow, when he launched the Department’s first electronic public service announcement (E-PSA) featuring the Smoke-Free Kids and Soccer campaign.
In a six-year integrated program at the University of Michigan, he received his BA in philosophy and biomedical sciences and his MD. He earned his MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. So completed his residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of California, San Francisco/ Stanford. In the past, he has served on a variety of national, nonprofit boards including Echoing Green, Clean Water Fund, the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Community Catalyst, the American Medical Student Association Foundation, and Grantmakers in Health.
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