Christopher Gill
Associate Professor of Global Health
Dr. Gill is an infectious diseases specialist by training. From 2002 to 2008, he was a faculty member of the Department of Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health, engaged in a wide variety of clinical trials and investigations. His research interests have focused on child survival, and include diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, pneumococcal and meningococcal disease, adherence to HIV medications, and neonatal survival. He was the principal investigator of the Lufwanyama Neonatal Survival Project in Northern Zambia (LUNESP), a prospective, cluster randomized and controlled effectiveness study designed to determine whether training traditional birth attendants to manage several common perinatal conditions could reduce neonatal mortality in the setting of a resource poor country with limited access to healthcare. The results demonstrated that training traditional birth attendants in neonatal resuscitation skills significantly reduces neonatal mortality by approximately 50 percent. From 2008 to the end of 2010, he was the director of the Meningitis ACWY conjugate vaccine clinical trials group at Novartis Vaccines. There he was responsible for the design, implementation, and analysis of Phase IIb, III, and IV clinical trials in support of the vaccine, and played a key role in licensing this new vaccine in over 33 countries around the world, including the US. In 2011, he rejoined the faculty at the BU Center for Global Health and Development and the BU School of Public Health. He has an MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and an MS from Tufts University Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Studies.
Dr. Gill is the Director of the BUSPH Pharmaceuticals Program, a unique educational offering at BUSPH that aims to educate public health practitioners about the role of pharmaceuticals in public health. He is also a member of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Pharmaceutical Policy (WHOCCPP), which provides research and programs for the improvement of access to essential drugs in developing countries and the development of policies that promote greater affordability and the appropriate usage of these medicines.