Yale School of Public Health Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, MPH, presented the prestigious C.-E. A. Winslow Medal to Dr. Peter Hotez, BA '80, MD, PhD, during a ceremony before a full house in Winslow Auditorium at the Yale School of Public Health on April 24, 2025.
Dr. Hotez, a Yale College graduate, spent a decade as a postdoctoral fellow and on the YSPH faculty during the 1990s. He is renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to vaccine development. Dean Ranney introduced him as “a great scientist, an ardent vaccine advocate, and science explainer.”
Dr. Hotez warmly embraced several of his former YSPH colleagues before his talk, among them Dr. I. George Miller, who joined Yale School of Medicine in 1969 and was the first to show a virus could cause cancer. Dr. Hotez met Dr. Miller when he arrived as an undergraduate at Yale in 1976, he said.
Speaking to the large audience, Dr. Hotez said that during his time at YSPH, the school was “a real powerhouse.” Yale is where he was taught not only science, “but how to be a good person, to be honest and forthright,” he added.
A distinguished pediatrician-scientist, Dr. Hotez is co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and serves as professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In addition to developing vaccines, he has spent his career addressing neglected tropical diseases and public health disparities.
Linking Science and Society
The ceremony marked the first time that the C.-E. A. Winslow Medal has been awarded since YSPH became an independent school in 2024. A public health leader in the U.S. and globally, Winslow defined public health as “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private communities, and individuals. Dr. Hotez’s work exemplifies Winslow’s definition of public health, Dean Ranney said.
Other distinguished recipients of the Winslow Medal have included Sir Richard Doll, an epidemiologist who showed that smoking caused cancer and heart disease, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, MD, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, guiding the country through the HIV/AIDS crisis as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Hotez and each of the medal recipients are “reinventing how we do our science and how we link it out into society to ensure the health of all,” Ranney said. “That’s what our school stands for. That’s what our new strategic plan stands for. And I know it’s what each of you in this room is here to do – to think how we confront the rising tide of anti-science, how we deal with ever-present threats to human health, and how we reorganize systems and structures to make sure each person, no matter who they are or where they live, realizes their birthright of health and lifespan.”
Inviting Dr. Hotez to the stage, Ranney added, “It’s a true pleasure to welcome him back, to express our gratitude for the work he has done for the health of the world, and to thank him for all of the ways in which he inspires us in linking science and society, ensuring that public health is foundational to communities everywhere.”
Connecting climate change and viruses
One of the most frequent questions Dr. Hotez is asked is why are we experiencing a regular cadence of pandemics and pandemic threats across the world.
• Severe Acute Reparatory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002
• The Swine Flu (H1N1) in 2009
• Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012
• Ebola in 2014 in West Africa and Dallas, Texas
• Zika in 2016 in South Texas, South Florida, and Brazil
• The Ebola epidemic in 2019 in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
• SARS-COVID in 2019
• And recently, the Bird Flu (H5N1)
Dr. Hotez began his talk by answering that question, displaying a predictive map showing emerging tropical infections in the Texas and Florida Gulf Coast as well as in Greece, Spain, and Croatia. “Many of us are predicting we will have a third SARS-like coronavirus soon,” he added.
While taking a daily walk recently, he noticed that “mosquito season started in Houston two weeks ago (in mid-April) and now goes to the end of the year due to warming temperatures.” He noted that viruses like Dengue, Zika, and yellow fever are spread by mosquitoes.
After flatlining for 2,000 years, global temperatures rose in the last 200 years due to industrialization and fossil fuel burning to the point that we are now seeing 50º Celsius (122º Fahrenheit) temperatures in places like Mexico City, India, Iraq, and Syria, Dr. Hotez said.
Urbanization also contributes to the spread of viruses. “COVID and Ebola are natural viruses of bats, and bats are seeking new habitats closer to people because of changing temperatures and rainfall patterns.” Megacities have risen in low- and middle-income countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lagos, and Nigeria, as well as on the Indian subcontinent, in Bangladesh and in Latin American cities such as Lima and Bogota.
“The world’s population “is coalescing in these hot and sweltering megacities,” Dr. Hotez said. People living in those megacities experience food insecurity and lack clean water for drinking and sanitation, conditions that will create the next opportunity for pandemic threats and tropical diseases, he said.
Where he lives in the Texas triangle of Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio is another “area of vulnerability,” he added.
Developing vaccines for impoverished populations
Dr. Hotez has led efforts to develop vaccines for diseases affecting impoverished populations. He led or co-led the development of vaccines for diseases ranging from hookworm to coronavirus. The hookworm anemia vaccine that he worked on while at YSPH is now showing high levels of protective immunity in clinical trials.
The low-cost COVID vaccines that he helped develop have been administered to over 100 million children and adults in India and Indonesia. He works with vaccine producers in low- and middle-income countries, including the Developing Country Vaccine Manufacturers, a group of about 40 partners in Asia, the African continent, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Explaining the spread of measles
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination rates have stalled, and childhood infections are returning. “Measles is the first to come back because it’s highly transferable,” he said.
The social disruption caused by the COVID pandemic partly explains stalled vaccination rates, as does the mobilization of the anti-vaccine movement, which gained momentum during the pandemic.
“When you look at the lowest COVID vaccination rates in country, one is West Texas, and now it’s
spilling over into childhood immunizations,” he said. The West Texas measles outbreak has spread to neighboring New Mexico and is now moving into Oklahoma and the country’s prairie regions. “Measles transmission has now been sustained for six months. If it is sustained for more than a year we lose our measles elimination status,” he said.
He said childhood vaccines do not cause autism. His daughter Rachel’s autism was his entry into this field of scientific inquiry. Chemicals in the environment that interact with autism genes increase the likelihood that a child will be born with autism, he added.
We can promote the value of science by telling our stories. Members of the current Yale community – students, staff, and faculty – can use the Yale Library to access Dr. Hotez’s books.
• The deadly rise of anti-science: a scientist's warning
• Consequences of COVID-19: A One Health Approach to the Responses, Challenges, and Lessons Learned
• Preventing the next pandemic: vaccine diplomacy in a time of anti-science
• Vaccines did not cause Rachel's autism: my journey as a vaccine scientist, pediatrician, and autism dad
• Blue Marble Health neglected diseases of the poor living amidst wealth