David has been working to improve the health of low-income communities in Latin America and Africa since 1985 by empowering people at the grassroots level. He helps people in these communities create high-quality, equitable healthcare systems by giving them the tools to help themselves.

Noting how few health professionals were available to the poor in Nicaragua, David recruited U.S. health workers to join him in providing training, ultimately founding an organization to build health capacity in Africa and Latin America. Thousands of African and Latin American doctors, nurses, students and community health workers received training from the volunteers that Dr. Egilman mobilized. David once put a second mortgage on his home in Western Massachusetts to fund this work and continues to devote tremendous effort to creating healthy communities.

David is a physician and professor at Brown University and is often asked to testify in court cases about environmental and public health issues. David donates a significant portion of his income and free office space to the health organization he founded. He encourages his students and employees to contribute to this international health work.

David is shaped by his family’s history. David’s father was a concentration camp survivor who worked as a shoemaker in Roxbury, Mass., after World War II. Many members of his family were killed in the Holocaust. David has transformed his knowledge of human tragedy into an effort to change the world.

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