Davidson Hamer

Dr. Hamer is a board-certified specialist in infectious diseases with a particular interest in tropical infectious diseases. He holds the Certificate in Travel Medicine from the International Society of Travel Medicine and CTropMed certificate from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Hamer is the co-Principal Investigator for the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network, a global network of 68 sites in 29 countries that conducts surveillance of emerging infectious diseases using returning travelers, immigrants, and refugees as sentinels of infection (www.istm.org/geosentinel). In addition to routine surveillance, the network is undertaking multi-site, multi-country evaluations of fever in travelers including pathogen discovery for individuals for whom no infectious etiology is identified; the long term impact of chikungunya, dengue and Zika on physical and psychosocial health of travelers; the impact of severe malaria on medium-term neurocognitive function of travelers and migrants; and evaluations of biomarkers for predicting severe disease in febrile travelers. Dr. Hamer is planning future molecular epidemiological studies of dengue and chikungunya to evaluate new outbreaks and patterns of disease spread.

Dr. Hamer also has extensive field experience in maternal, neonatal and child survival research including studies of community-based interventions to improve maternal and neonatal health with a focus on malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases. Dr. Hamer currently has active projects in Bangladesh, South Africa, and Zambia. Major current projects include neonatal sepsis prevention using prebiotics and probiotics in Bangladesh; using community health workers to improve early childhood development in rural South Africa, antiretroviral adherence among congenitally infected HIV-positive children in Lusaka, Zambia; and a scaled-up evaluation of community-based mothers’ groups for improving early child development in rural Zambia.

Selected Publications

1. Gautret P, Angelo KM, Asgeirsson H, Duvignaud A, van Genderen PJJ, Bottieau E, Chen LH, Parker S, Connor BA, Barnett ED, Libman M, Hamer DH. International mass gatherings and travel-associated illness: A GeoSentinel cross-sectional, observational study. Travel Med Infect Dis. 2019 Nov 09; 101504. PMID: 31707112.
2. Mwananyanda L, Pierre C, Mwansa J, Cowden C, Localio AR, Kapasa ML, Machona S, Musyani CL, Chilufya MM, Munanjala G, Lyondo A, Bates MA, Coffin SE, Hamer DH. Preventing Bloodstream Infections and Death in Zambian Neonates: Impact of a Low-cost Infection Control Bundle. Clin Infect Dis. 2019 Sep 27; 69(8):1360-1367. PMID: 30596901.
3. Angelo KM, Libman M, Gautret P, Barnett E, Grobusch MP, Hagmann SHF, Gobbi F, Schwartz E, van Genderen PJJ, Asgeirsson H, Hamer DH. The rise in travel-associated measles infections-GeoSentinel, 2015-2019. J Travel Med. 2019 Sep 02; 26(6). PMID: 31218359.