Professor Philippa Easterbrook is a senior academic, global health leader, infectious disease and public health researcher, epidemiogist and physician, who has dedicated more than three decades to clinical care, research, and scale-up of the global response to the HIV epidemic, and the last 7 years also to the global elimination of hepatitis C and B infection. She is currently based in the HIV, Hepatitis and STI department at the World Health Organisation Headquarters in Geneva, where she has led and coordinated the scientific research and evidence-base and development of WHO global normative guidance in HIV and viral hepatitis B and C infection, alongside implementation of testing and treatment scale-up in more than 20 low and middle-income countries, and the development of a global hepatitis elimination strategy and guidance on validating elimination of hepatitis C in a country. She served as member and vice-chair of the WHO Guidelines Review Committee for six years, the WHO Public Health Research Ethics group, and the WHO COVID Publications Review Committee. She also led the recent WHO HQ global investigation of severe acute hepatitis in young children across five regions. Her research has encompassed epidemiology, clinical trials, operational/implementation science and qualitative research, and laboratory-based studies.
Professor Easterbrook graduated with Distinction in Medicine from University of Cambridge, and completed her training in general medicine and infectious diseases in London, Oxford and Birmingham. As a Harkness fellow at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, she trained in public health and epidemiology, and was subsequently Senior Lecturer in Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology at Imperial College, London. For eleven years, she was Head of Department, Professor of HIV Medicine, and consultant physician in Infectious Diseases at King´s College London, and also served as Head of Research at the Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, one of the leading public-private partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa.