Dr. Bill Stauffer, senior advisor for the Migration Health Initiative (MHI), was recently named one of Minnesota’s top doctors in Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine. Nominated by his peers as a physician they would trust with their own care, Dr. Stauffer used this honor not to celebrate personal achievement, but to sound an alarm about the fragile progress the U.S. has made against vaccine-preventable diseases.
A Peer-Recognized Leader in Medicine
Top doctors are chosen from among nominees based on merit, peer recognition, professional achievements, research contributions, and disciplinary history. Dr. Stauffer’s selection reflects his standing among Minnesota’s medical community and his decades-long commitment to protecting migrant health.
Advocating for Vaccines at a Pivotal Time
As a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine and faculty in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Stauffer took the recognition as an opportunity to advocate for vaccine research, development, promotion, and uptake. He recalls receiving smallpox and polio vaccines as a child; smallpox has since been eradicated globally and polio has been effectively eliminated in the U.S.
Now, he warns, changes to federal government policy, the high cost of vaccine research, and a collective forgetfulness about the seriousness of vaccine-preventable diseases threaten to reverse the progress that has already been made.
Building National Infrastructure During COVID-19
Dr. Stauffer was instrumental in founding MHI in 2020, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called upon him, Program Director Erin Mann, and other colleagues specializing in immigrant and refugee health to lead the national COVID-19 response for refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities in the United States.
Originally called the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants (NRC-RIM), the initiative benefited from Dr. Stauffer’s medical expertise to inform public health resources, his longstanding connections to national and international partners, and his guidance in transitioning the center from the University of Minnesota to its current home at the Task Force for Global Health as the Migration Health Initiative.
A Career Dedicated to Global Health Equity
From 2005 to 2019, Dr. Stauffer served as lead medical advisor to the CDC Division of Global Migration and Health, where he worked on issues of human mobility and its effects on human health. He has also acted as an advisor to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization.
His research areas include refugee and immigrant health issues, infectious disease surveillance, diagnostics, neglected tropical diseases, evaluations of public health programs, and examinations of drug costs and their impact on patients – work that continues to inform policy and practice today.