John Crump

John Andrew Crump is a New Zealand infectious diseases physician, medical microbiologist, and epidemiologist. He is Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Global Health at the University of Otago and an adjunct professor of medicine, Pathology, and Global Health at Duke University. He serves as Director of the Otago Global Health Institute, one of the university's research centres. His primary research interest is fever in the tropics, focusing on invasive bacterial diseases and bacterial and viral zoonoses. and Marlborough Boys' College. He graduated MB ChB in 1993 and completed his MD doctoral thesis in 2013 on clinical and laboratory aspects of HIV in Tanzania from the University of Otago Medical School. He was awarded DTM&H in 1995 by the Royal College of Physicians after studying tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Crump trained as both an internist in infectious diseases and as a pathologist in medical microbiology in New Zealand, England, Australia, and the US, being made MRCP(UK) in 1997, FRACP in 1999, FRCPA in 2004, and FRCP in 2009. He served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC). He has advocated for a comprehensive approach to investigating febrile illness as a necessary progression from the traditional disease-specific approach in tropical medicine. He has contributed to describing the problem of malaria over-diagnosis, and also to appreciation of range of neglected causes of fever including invasive bacterial diseases; bacterial zoonoses such as brucellosis, leptospirosis, Q fever, and rickettsioses; and viral diseases such as Rift Valley Fever. Much of his research is trans-disciplinary involving close collaboration between human health experts, veterinarians, ecologists, and social scientists, and following the so-called 'One Health' approach. Crump serves on the leadership group of the multi-centre international Febrile Illness Evaluation in a Broad Range of Endemicities (FIEBRE) study that characterizes major preventable and treatable causes of fever in low-resource settings in Africa and Asia.

Crump has led the development of reporting standards for disease prevalence and incidence studies, devised hybrid surveillance methods for febrile disease incidence estimation, and has made major contributions on natural history approaches for disease burden assessment. He has led work characterizing the burden of typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, that has contributed to diagnosis, management, and prevention efforts for these diseases, including vaccine deployment and vaccine development. He has served in a range of advisory roles to the World Health Organization, including on the burden of invasive salmonelloses to the Foodborne Diseases Epidemiology Reference Group, the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization Working Group on Typhoid Vaccines, and the WHO Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Technical Advisory Group on Salmonella vaccines. Crump leads work generating and synthesising data to inform country decisions on typhoid prevention by vaccine introduction and non-vaccine measures in endemic areas.

Crump has a research interest in global health ethics. He has made major contributions on responsible global health training programs, spurred by concern for the unintended consequences of expansion of short-term global health training opportunities in low-resource areas. With Dr. Jeremy Sugarman, Crump co-chaired the Wellcome Trust-funded Working Group on Ethics Guidelines for Global Health Training (WEIGHT) that developed initial guidelines for responsible global health training programs. Crump has developed normative guidance on the responsible scheduling of multiple time zone teleconferences, and has also written on the value of cosmopolitan principles and the challenges posed by health nationalism in global health responses.

Awards and honors Crump was awarded the 2005 US CDC James H. Steele Veterinary Public Health Award for outstanding contributions in the investigation, control, or prevention of zoonotic diseases or other animal-related human health problems. In 2012, Crump received the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Bailey K. Ashford Medal for distinguished work in tropical medicine. In 2022, Crump was awarded the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Chalmers Medal for research of outstanding merit in tropical medicine and mentoring of junior investigators. Crump was awarded the 2021 University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine Dean's Medal for Research Excellence and the 2024 University of Otago Distinguished Research Medal. In 2025, Crump was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand 'for breakthroughs in management of non-malaria fever and sepsis in tropical regions. '

Publications As of December 2025, Crump had published >330 scientific manuscripts, cited >70,000 times. He is a 2020 cross-field Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, defined as having multiple papers ranked in the top 1% by citations for field and year.