An epidemiologist and award-winning author, Dr. Daniel Halperin has conducted research for 40 years on various health and sociocultural issues in Latin America, Africa, and other regions. Since 2011 he has served as an Adjunct Full Professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill. Dr. Halperin received a B.A. in Economics and Development Studies in 1979 and an M.S. in Health and Medical Sciences in 1982 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Completing his doctoral training in medical and cultural anthropology and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, Dr. Halperin has taught at Harvard School of Public Health, the University of California in San Francisco, and the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. From 2001 to 2006, he worked as the Senior HIV Prevention and Behavior Change Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development and had extensive involvement with the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and others in the design and evaluation of prevention, care and other HIV-AIDS programs. In more recent years, he has focused on the obesity and COVID-19 pandemics.
A well-known author, Dr. Halperin has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers on infectious diseases, many in leading scientific journals such as The Lancet and Science, as well as numerous pieces in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. He also co-authored a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” book on the AIDS pandemic, has published over 10 articles on COVID-19, and in 2020 released “Facing COVID Without Panic,” a book to help set the record straight on the science of the virus and to relieve the public’s anxiety about COVID due to misleading, exaggerated, or conflicting information disseminated on the internet and in the news media.
Dr. Halperin has collaborated with Reverend Richard Cizik on some initiatives funded by the United Nations Foundation to prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions, by expanding access to family planning services in developing countries. Raised Jewish (his father was a Holocaust scholar), he has been active over the years with a variety of faith-based organizations, including Christian Connections for International Health.