The Task Force mourns the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Dr. Walt Dowdle, known to many for his scientific integrity and the numerous contributions he made to public health during his 60+ year career as a passionate public health expert.
Dr. Walter Dowdle. Photo credit: Global Health Chronicles.
Our cherished Task Force colleague, friend and mentor, Dr. Walt Dowdle, PhD, died on November 17, 2025. A virologist, Dowdle was known to many for his scientific integrity and the numerous contributions he made to public health during his 60+ year career as a passionate public health expert.
The Task Force for Global Health has been fortunate to have worked with and learned from Dowdle for nearly 25 of those years. He retired from The Task Force in 2020. A tribute article at the time cited his many accomplishments and attributes. We’ve excerpted from that article below:
On any given day, when Dowdle would walk to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he would have a bag in-hand picking up litter along his route; hardly what you would expect of a deputy director of the CDC, expert in the United States’ fight against the AIDS epidemic, and a leading scientist. But that is just the kind of man he was.
“He is one of those people that is very centered, very calm, and he never lets his ego get in the way of getting the job done,” said Kimberly Koporc, who worked closely with Dowdle at The Task Force. “He’s always been an amazing mentor to me, and I think he’s been an amazing mentor to many people,” she added.
Helping Build The Task Force We Know Today
After retiring from a 34-year career at the CDC, where he held a variety of leadership positions, Dowdle joined The Task Force in 1994, known as The Task Force for Child Survival and Development at the time. He helped start The Task Force’s Polio Eradication Center, including the Polio Antivirals Initiative; led disease elimination and eradication efforts; and started and ran the Children Without Worms and Malarone Donation Program.
He was also instrumental in developing the Global Polio Laboratory Network utilized by the World Health Organization to provide laboratory guidelines on containing poliovirus. In an initial pilot project, Dowdle developed and tested a plan to implement the laboratory containment program in the United States so that it could be replicated globally.
But Dowdle’s passion to fight diseases went beyond his work in polio. Soon after joining The Task Force, he played a key role in convening the Conference on Global Disease Elimination and Eradication as Public Health Strategies co-hosted in Atlanta in 1998 by The Task Force and numerous international and national agencies. This conference was a turning point for disease elimination and eradication efforts and set the agenda for much of what global and public health experts continue to work on today.
Dowdle also started and ran the Malarone® Donation Program and Children Without Worms, initially called the Mebendazole Donation Initiative, at The Task Force in an effort to treat resistant malaria and intestinal worms, respectively; the latter program continues to operate and improve the health of women and children in low-income countries today.
Tragically, during the operation of the Malarone® Donation Program, The Task Force and Dowdle lost a dear colleague, Mary Louise Martin, DVM, MS, Associate Director of the Malarone® Donation Program, in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Kenya. In honor of his colleague, Dowdle set up the Mary Louise Martin, DVM, MS, Endowed Memorial Scholarship which provides scholarships for disadvantaged young women in Kenya to attend the Starehe Girls Centre, a national boarding school.
“In everything he did, he was a pillar of integrity and commitment,” said Alan Hinman, MD, MPH, Consulting Advisor to The Task Force’s vaccine-preventable disease programs and close colleague to Dowdle.
His commitment helped create The Task Force as it is today, serving millions of people in its work to eliminate diseases and protect the health of populations, and his contributions will forever be valued by The Task Force and beyond. We are incredibly thankful that he gave his time and expertise to our work and those we serve.
Explore More Posts
Deworming efforts reach five billion doses as new coalition promises further progress
Global deworming efforts have reached a new, unprecedented milestone: more than five billion deworming tablets have been delivered to children
Task Force Elevates Hepatitis, Malaria, and NTD Elimination Efforts to World Leaders
As a non-state actor in official relations with the WHO, The Task Force co-hosted two side events and engaged in
A Celebration of Heroes: Honoring the Legacies of Drs. Dowdle, Foege, and Hinman
This gathering was co-sponsored by The Carter Center, CDC Foundation, Rollins School of Public Health, and The Task Force for