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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 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Founding Director of the Innovation + Design Enabling Access (IDEA) Initiative in the Department of International Health. The Initiative also serves as the Secretariat for the Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC), an alliance with over twenty civil society groups and the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank for 55 developing countries.
Through research, policy work and training, the IDEA Initiative seeks to enhance innovation and access to health technologies needed for public health. Professor So has co-chaired a technical working group for the 2021 WHO Fair Pricing Forum; conducted research on equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, including for a joint project for the UN Economic Commission of the Asia Pacific and WHO; previously was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Accelerating Rare Diseases Research and Orphan Product Development; and currently serves on the WHO’s Technical Advisory Groups of the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool and Market Information for Access (MI4A) for Vaccines program.
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, which delivered its recommendations to the UN Secretary-General in 2019; contributed to the Lancet Infectious Diseases Commission on Antibiotic Resistance; 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 UN Environment Program’s global spotlight report on the environmental dimensions of AMR in 2023.
He previously worked as an associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Health Equity Division where his grant-making programs ranged from helping to ensure more affordable access to AIDS medicines to enabling tobacco control efforts in Southeast Asia. Overseeing the Liaison Office for Quality as senior advisor to the administrator at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. So coordinated departmental input to the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry and its Consumer Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. He served as Secretary Donna Shalala’s White House Fellow, when he launched the department’s first electronic public service announcement featuring the “Smoke-Free Kids and Soccer” campaign.
He received his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and biomedical sciences and his M.D. at the University of Michigan. He earned his Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University; 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.
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