Adnan A. Hyder

Adnan A. Hyder is Pakistani-American academic who is the Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health since August 2025.

Early life and education Hyder was born in Pakistan. He received his MD from Aga Khan University in Pakistan in 1990. Subsequently, Hyder moved to Johns Hopkins University and earned his MPH in 1993 and his PhD in 1998,

Career Under Hyder's leadership as Founding Director of the Johns Hopkins' International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU) in 2010, the JH-IIRU received the status designation of World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Injuries, Violence and Accident Prevention. It was only the third collaborating center in the United States to focus on injury prevention at the time. In 2012, Hyder was promoted to full professor with tenure in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In 2018, Hyder was recruited to join the Milken Institute School of Public Health as the Senior Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Global Health. As Senior Associate Dean for Research, Hyder oversees domestic and international engagement research strategy; compliance support systems; research communications and dissemination; policy and global affairs; and research academics at undergraduate and graduate level. Hyder leads the Office of Research Excellence with units on research integrity, compliance, and ethics; research metrics; and research administration and coordination.

In 2019, Hyder founded the Center on Commercial Determinants of Health, one of the first research centers in the world involved in studying and addressing the growing health burden caused by commercial determinants of health. The center focuses on researching private sector engagement in public health as it pertains to various vulnerable populations around the world. In August 2025, Hyder will succeed Sandro Galea as dean of the Boston University School of Public Health.

Hyder has served as a consultant to a number of organizations, including the World Health Organization and the World Bank, and is known for his work on burden of disease and injury measures, for developing the Healthy Life Years indicator, and building on the health systems approach to injury prevention and control in developing countries. Hyder was a contributing author to three chapters of the most recent Disease Control Priorities, Road Traffic Injuries, Non-Transport Unintentional Injury, and Injury Prevention and Environmental Health: Key Messages from Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition.

Research Hyder has co-authored more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific publications and numerous reports Hyder's work has focused on understanding and improving the training of African and Asian health professionals in ethics.

Hyder is an outspoken advocate for road safety and has stated, "accepting our lack of progress is the first step to developing a strong and sustainable set of actions for changing the status quo on global road safety."

Hyder has worked on bioethics and research ethics globally for over 20 years with a special focus on capacity development, funded by the U.S. Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health. He has also previously urged research funders to ethically design grants programs for global health research, arguing incentives should be created for applicants to focus their research on marginalized communities.

Honors and awards

1992-1994: International Fellowship for Post-Graduate Studies in Public Health, Aga Khan Foundation, Geneva 1998: Elected to the Delta Omega Society - Alpha Chapter; peer reviewed honors society for public health graduates in USA. Lifetime member as of 1999 2000: Advising, Mentoring and Teaching Recognition Award (AMTR), Student Assembly, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, USA 2001: Mid-Career Achievement Award, International Health Section, American Public Health Association, USA 2009: Global Health Ambassador, Research!America and Paul Rogers Society for Global Health 2010: Accepted the Prince Michael International Award for Road Safety for the Road Traffic Injuries Research Network (chair) 2011: Aron Sobel Guardian Award, Association for Safe International Road Travel 2019: SafeKids Worldwide, C. Everett Koop Medal of Distinction, USA