Alfred Sommer
Alfred Sommer | |
|---|---|
Alfred Sommer | |
| Born | October 2, 1942 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Union College (B.S., 1963) Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1967) Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (M.H.S., 1973) |
| Known for | Vitamin A deficiency Blindness prevention |
| Awards | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fries Prize for Improving Health (2008) American Academy of Ophthalmology Laureate (2011) Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research (2005) National Academy of Sciences (2001) Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (1997) National Academy of Medicine (1992) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ophthalmology Epidemiology International Health |
Alfred (Al) Sommer (born October 2, 1942) is an American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent. The World Bank and the Copenhagen Consensus list vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the world.