Ronald J. Waldman, MD, MPH, is Deputy Director of the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, and former Director of its Program on Forced Migration and Health. He is a physician specializing in child health in developing countries. Dr. Waldman began his career with the World Health Organization's Global Smallpox Eradication Program in Bangladesh. He subsequently worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more than twenty years where, among other assignments, he directed technical support activities for the Combating Childhood Communicable Diseases Project. In the 1980s and 1990s he and his colleagues at the CDC published a series of studies on the epidemiology of refugee health and provided public health assistance in many international humanitarian crises.

Dr. Waldman was the coordinator of the Task Force on Cholera Control at WHO from 1992-1994 and the Technical Director of the USAID-funded child survival BASICS Project from 1995-1999. He is the immediate past Chairman of the International Health Section of the American Public Health Association and serves in an advisory capacity to a number of international non-governmental organizations. He has worked in complex emergencies in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Albania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and, most recently, Iraq.