International Health Announces Leon Robertson Faculty Development Chair

The Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is delighted to welcome Dr. Kavi Bhalla as the newest Assistant Professor and Leon Robertson Faculty Development Chair. With this appointment, the Department of International Health will continue to strengthen our commitment to injury prevention, as Dr. Bhalla will be an integral member of the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU), a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Injuries, Violence and Accident Prevention.

As a research scientist in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Bhalla brings to the Bloomberg School a solid background in injury epidemiology and burden of injury estimation in information-poor settings. He co-leads the injury expert group of the Global Burden of Disease 2010 project. Dr Bhalla obtained his bachelor of technology in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India, and in 2001, he received a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in New York.  From 2001-2004, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Virginia Center for Applied Biomechanics where his work focused on the biomechanics of injuries in car-pedestrian crashes.

Dr. Bhalla’s research interests are closely aligned with JH-IIRU, and include the health impact of transportation policies, with a focus on prevention of road traffic injuries in developing countries. His experience in international road safety, burden of disease analysis, and injury biomechanics will be an asset not only to the Health Systems program, in which JH-IIRU resides, but also to the entire department.

The Leon Robertson chair was endowed to support the career development of an assistant or associate professor in the Department of International Health whose principal focus relates to the field of injury prevention by providing substantial funding for a period of three years, after which a new recipient will be identified.