Neglected Tropical Disease Policy and Advocacy
In addition to his R&D activities, Prof. Hotez is a leading global health advocate and policymaker in the area of neglected tropical diseases, with an emphasis on providing impoverished populations access to essential and existing medicines for neglected tropical diseases. His 2005-06 papers in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) co-authored with thought leaders from the UK and WHO helped to consolidate the concept of the ‘NTDs’ and led to the implementation of “rapid impact packages” of essential medicines for the NTDs now reaching hundreds of millions of people in low income countries through support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other sources. These activities helped to promote the establishment of the Global Network for NTDs, which Hotez co-founded in 2006 Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (“Global Network”) with leading experts in the field. The Global Network, launched at the Clinton Global Initiative and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, highlights the horrific health and educational effects of neglected tropical diseases and advocates for their control and elimination. As a result of these activities, and the effort of public-private partnerships and NGOs, today more than 250 million people are receiving essential medicines for neglected tropical diseases.
Hotez is also the founding Editor-In-Chief of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Neglected Tropical Diseases, the first online open access medical journal focused exclusively on neglected tropical diseases.
His papers in PLOS NTDs on the Geopolitics of NTDs provide a new framework for incorporating NTDs into U.S. foreign policy and helped to launch the concepts known as ‘vaccine diplomacy’. More recently, Prof. Hotez is also expanding his efforts to take on NTDs among the poor living in the U.S. and other developed countries. His 2008 PLOS NTDs paper on “Neglected infections in the United States of America” highlighted the hidden burden of NTDs in the American South while his 2012 op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Tropical Diseases: The New Plague of Poverty", emphasized the especially high burden of NTDs among the poor in Texas. His work is leading to a new global health framework based on extreme poverty regardless of whether it occurs in low- and middle-income countries or industrialized nations. Many of these concepts are articulated in his book “Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases” ASM Press.
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