David Walton

Biography

David Walton, MD, MPH is the co-founder and CEO of Build Health International, a non-profit dedicated to building health care infrastructure, with a focus on renewable energy and sustainability, in low- and middle-income countries. He is an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. After obtaining an MD from Harvard Medical School and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, he trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as the first Doris and Howard Hiatt Global Health Equity resident.

Dr. Walton’s work has focused on health systems strengthening, improvement and expansion of medical care, and medical infrastructure in resource-poor settings. In the more than 15 years in which he worked with Partners In Health (PIH), a Boston-based non-profit organization, he served numerous roles: clinician, administrative director, liaison to the Ministry of Health of Haiti, and Deputy Director of PIH Haiti. He also led several teams that designed, developed, built, and operationalized three hospitals in central Haiti, including Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais, a 350-bed teaching hospital, the largest and most advanced public sector hospital in the country. Dr. Walton also led a multi-national team that developed an open-source hospital management information system which has been implemented in over 20 countries.

He has received several awards for his accomplishments in Global Health, more recently the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award and GOOD Magazine’s GOOD 100. He has numerous appearances in digital and print media, as well as several publications in the medical literature.