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Albert Wu

Professor of Health Policy & Management and Medicine
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

An internist and professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Dr. Albert Wu, M.D., MPH, has worked since the begin­ning of the COVID-19 pandemic to support and improve the well-being and resilience of health care workers and the Baltimore community.

Since 2011, Wu has led Baltimore CONNECT, a nonprofit network of commu­nity-based organizations, churches and neighborhood associations, in a partner­ship focused on linking social and health care services across Baltimore.

At the start of the pandemic, Baltimore CONNECT and its 30-plus members participated in a weekly online meeting to identify the pressing needs of their clients and local assets and to plan joint action.

CONNECT was among the first orga­nizations to obtain and distribute food, personal protective equipment and sani­tizer to the community. In the past 12 months, CONNECT has raised more than $120,000 in new grants and donations and distributed more than 37,000 masks to residents.

Wu himself has been a prominent voice on the impact of COVID-19 on health care workers. He has delivered more than 50 presentations nationally and internation­ally on the pandemic and has been widely interviewed and published on the topic.

This year, Wu was appointed to head the Scientific Advisory Committee for the World Health Organization’s COVAX No-Fault Compensation Program, designed to provide free COVID-19 vaccine to the world’s 92 poorest countries.

“Dr. Wu has been a leader at Johns Hopkins and around the world on the critical issue of supporting health care workers, in addition to patients,” said Cheryl Connors, director of Johns Hopkins Medicine Resilience in Stressful Events. “He has been a true health care hero during the COVID-19 pandemic.”