2024 Porter Prize Awardee - Peter Hotez
Co-Director, Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development & Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine
About Hotez
Peter J. Hotez, is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also a professor at Baylor University, fellow in disease and poverty at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy, senior fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, faculty fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University, and health policy scholar in the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.
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Hotez obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980 (phi beta kappa), followed by a PhD degree in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1986, and an MD from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987. He also holds honorary DSc doctoral degrees from the Elmezzi Graduate School of Molecular Medicine (Northwell Health), Roanoke College, honorary doctoral degrees in both science and humanities by The National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), and City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.
Hotez is an internationally-recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. As co-director of the Texas Children’s CVD, he leads a team and product development partnership for developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and SARS/MERS/SARS-2 coronavirus, diseases affecting hundreds of millions of children and adults worldwide, while championing access to vaccines globally and in the United States.
In December 2021, he co-led efforts at the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development to develop low-cost recombinant protein COVID vaccine technologies for global health, resulting in emergency use authorization in India and Indonesia. A human hookworm vaccine is accelerating rapidly through clinical trials – this is a project he began as an MD/PhD student in the 1980s.
Hotez has authored more than 680 original papers indexed on PubMed and is the author of five single-author books, including Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases (ASM Press); Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth (Johns Hopkins University Press); Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism (Johns Hopkins University Press); and Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-science (Johns Hopkins University Press).
He served previously as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and he is founding editor-in-chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. In 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative he co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people. Hotez is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (Public Health Section) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Public Policy Section).
In 2014-16, he served in the Obama Administration as US Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the US Government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2018, he was appointed by the US State Department to serve on the Board of Governors for the US Israel Binational Science Foundation, and is frequently called upon frequently to testify before US Congress. He has served on infectious disease task forces for two consecutive Texas Governors.
In 2022 Hotez and his colleague Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for “their work to develop and distribute a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine to people of the world without patent limitation,” while in 2023, the National Academy of Medicine recognized them with their David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Biomedical Sciences and Clinical Medicine, and as Dallas Morning News Texans of the Year.
Hotez has also emerged as one of the leading defenders of vaccines in America. As both a vaccine scientist and autism parent, he has led national efforts to defend vaccines and to serve as an ardent champion of vaccines going up against a growing national “antivax” threat.
In 2018 and 2019, he received the Award for Leadership in Advocacy for Vaccines from ResearchAmerica and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, respectively.
In 2021-22 he received the AMA (American Medical Association) Scientific Leadership Award and the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) RWJF David E. Rogers Award, in addition to being recognized by the Anti-Defamation League with its annual Popkin Award for combating antisemitism. He was also honored with the John P. McGovern Award by The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA).
In 2023 he received the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science ) Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility for his “scientific work in vaccine development and his work as a public voice promoting and defending vaccines.” Also in 2023, Hotez received the Anthony Fauci Courage in Leadership Award from the IDSA (Infectious Diseases Society of America) and the LBJ Moral Courage Award from the Holocaust Museum Houston.
In 2024, Hotez received the Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Award from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research of Northwell Health, Sigma Xi’s John P. McGovern Science and Society Award, and was named to TIME 100 Health’s inaugural leaders in healthcare.
He appears frequently on television (including BBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), radio, and in newspaper interviews (including the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal).
About the Porter Prize
Excellence in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
The Porter Prize is awarded in recognition of an individual’s exemplary performance in health promotion and disease prevention. The Porter Prize is named in honor of Milton and Adrienne Porter.
Milton Porter (1910–96), as CEO of the L.B. Foster Company, was among the first industrialists in the nation to view the workplace as a site for wellness programs. Activities at his company resulted in smoking cessation, weight loss, and increased physical activity among employees. Understanding the benefits to society of clearly focused, well-managed, and fully funded health promotion and disease prevention efforts is the Porters’ legacy.
Previous Honorees
- 2022 Victor Dzau, president, National Academy of Medicine
- 2019 Donald S. Burke, physician, virologist, and researcher
- 2016 Paul A. Offit, physician, educator, virologist and author
- 2014 Michael Moss, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
- 2011 Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, Institut Pasteur, Paris; 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine recipient for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
- 2009 Nancy G. Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure
- 2004 Louis W. Sullivan, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and founder of the Morehouse School of Medicine
- 2003 William Novelli, AARP
- 2002 Gordon DeFriese, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- 2001 Steven A. Schroeder, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- 1998 Lester Breslow, University of California at Los Angeles
- 1996 C. Everett Koop, former U.S. surgeon general
- 1995 “It Takes a Whole Community to Raise a Child”
- 1994 Jonathan Fielding, University of California at Los Angeles
- 1993 Lisbeth B. Schorr, social worker and author
- 1992 Wilford A. Payne, Primary Care Health Services
- 1991 Senator John Heinz III
- 1989 J. Michael McGinnis, assistant surgeon general; deputy assistant secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and senior vice president and founding director of the Health Group, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- 1987 Robert D. Sparks, W. K. Kellogg Foundation 1988 Rev. Fred M. Rogers, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
- 1985 Anne Somers, health economist and author 1986 Clarence Pearson, Peter Drucker Institute
