JHVI Faculty Highlights

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds new research to determine the causes of childhood pneumonia

To help overcome the incomplete understanding of the causes of childhood pneumonia, JHSPH investigators have received three grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation totaling more than $40 million dollars over 5.5 years.   Orin Levine will lead the core initiative, called PERCH (Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health).  This initiative aims to build a new, rigorous evidence base by studying the causes of pediatric pneumonia in 5 to 10 countries across the developing world using state-of-the-art diagnostics.

Two additional studies will strengthen the initiative’s fight against pneumonia and related diseases. Hope Johnson will project the burden of disease in adolescents and adults attributable to two dangerous bacteria–the pneumococcus and the meningococcus–that together cause many cases of pneumonia and other life-threatening illnesses such as meningitis. Jennifer Moïsi will undertake an evaluation of diagnostic methods for pneumococcal disease, a major cause of childhood pneumonia, particularly in the developing world.

Together these projects will influence the development and deployment of life-saving vaccines throughout the world.

To view a New York Times article about PERCH, click here.


CIR faculty awarded NIH funding to evaluate new vaccines.

Ruth Karron and Anna Durbin will lead the evaluations of new live viral vaccines for adults and children through an NIH award of more than $31 million dollars.  The NIH contract, titled “Operation of a Facility for the Study of Infectious Agents, Vaccines and Antimicrobials in Adult and Pediatric Human Subjects”, will support phase I and II clinical trials of live attenuated vaccines, including vaccines for dengue, a mosquito-borne disease that is a leading global cause of hospitalization and death in children, and vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza viruses, and human metapneumovirus, which are important causes of ALRI (pneumonia, croup, and wheezing) in children.


Click here to read more recent vaccine news from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.