Biography

Dr. Charles King is a medical specialist in the area of infectious diseases, and a long-time researcher in the study of communicable diseases of sub-Saharan Africa. Although his academic base is the Center for Global Health and Diseases at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, for 40 years, he has studied the many factors related to parasitic infections and mosquito-borne diseases on the Kenyan south coast (Kwale County), in the Northeastern Province area (Ijara County) and along Lake Victoria (Usenge community). He has worked extensively with the Ministry of Health and now with Kenya Medical Research Institute on the problems of preventing and controlling these kinds of diseases in the communities where they most frequently occur.

He also served as Senior Scientist for the Schistosomiasis Consortium for Operational Research and Evaluation (SCORE) based at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.

Research projects have involved clinical trials for optimal control of the morbidity of parasitic disease, eco-epidemiological surveys of the space-time distribution of infection, family studies of the heretability of disease due to schistosomiasis (bilharzia), evaluation of ultrasound and dipstick diagnosis of urogenital schistosomiasis, and dynamic computer modeling of infection pathways for better implementation of disease control options. Earlier studies focused on the pathways of early human immune response to multicellular parasites (helminths).

Recent projects have focused on the impact of maternal parasite infections on the immune responses of newborn children. Separate community-based studies are examining individual and household risk factors for the mosquito-borne viral infections chikungunya, dengue fever, and Rift Valley fever.

Dr. King has served on advisory panels for the World Health Organization, the Wellcome Trust, and the National Institutes of Health. He is a founding Deputy Editor for the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.