July 8, 2021
Spotlight: David Townes’ dedication to international humanitarian work
Dr. David A. Townes, University of Washington professor of Emergency Medicine and adjunct professor of Global Health, has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to international humanitarian work and educating the next generation of humanitarian professionals.
In addition to his academic roles, Townes is a board-certified physician in Emergency Medicine. He earned his M.D. from the University of Massachusetts, where he realized an interest in emergency medicine.
“At the time, emergency medicine was just starting to explode in popularity,” Townes said. “Emergency medicine appealed to me because I liked seeing all types of people and all types of problems. I really liked the instant gratification of impacting someone’s wellbeing in real-time, right in front of you.”
He completed his internship and residency in emergency medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“I went through residency and I knew I wanted to work in an atypical environment,” Townes said. “I was very interested in wilderness and expedition medicine, as well as international emergency medicine as it was called at the time. Those are somewhat similar, where the practice of medicine is affected by the austere environment, lack of resources, and remoteness.”
At the University of Illinois at Chicago, Townes was mentored by Michael VanRooyen, a physician and expert in emergency medicine and global health who directs the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
“Under [VanRooyen’s] mentorship, we developed and published the curriculum for the first fellowship in the country in international emergency medicine,” Townes said.
The fellowship sought to provide students with a comprehensive education to support international emergency medicine efforts.
Townes and his collaborators realized that a greater understanding of public health improved international emergency medicine responses. As a result, the fellowship design included the completion of a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
After his residency, Townes became the first fellow of the program in international emergency response, earning his master’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy and Administration.
By 2001, Townes joined the faculty at the UW in the Division of Emergency Medicine while continuing his medical work in the fields of wilderness and expedition medicine, humanitarian emergencies and disease surveillance, among other areas of interest.
As Townes continued practicing medicine on an international scale, he realized the necessity to further his knowledge of tropical medicine. Tropical medicine is not traditionally a significant part of the American medical school curriculum, but Townes realized its importance in providing holistic and thorough patient care internationally.
Townes went to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, earning a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
From 2008 to 2010, Townes stepped away from clinical and teaching roles to work as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and Medical Epidemiologist in the Malaria Branch at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. In this role, Townes worked to investigate disease outbreaks and inform interventions on an international scale.
Subsequently, Townes shifted to the position of Public Health and Medical Technical Advisor to the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (now known as the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance) at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2012. Townes combined his technical expertise gained to provide technical knowledge to inform and advise international relief responses.
“The Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) is the part of the US government responsible for coordination of response to international disasters,” Townes said. “The bureau funds implementing partners, and includes a cohort of technical experts who inform international disaster response, provide technical support, review and contribute to US government policy, and monitor and evaluate BHA supported programs to ensure programs meet standards of care, are fiscally responsible, and ethically managed.”
From 2012 to 2014, Townes worked for the USAID in Washington D.C. but subsequently continued in this role from Seattle, where he resumed teaching at the UW as a professor of Emergency Medicine and Global Health.
In addition to teaching and continued international humanitarian response work, Townes serves as the faculty chair of the UW’s Graduate Certificate in International Humanitarian Response.
The International Humanitarian Response certificate is a graduate-level interdisciplinary training offered through the UW Graduate School and administered by the Population Health Initiative. The program seeks to train UW graduate and professional students in becoming the next generation of leaders in international humanitarian response.
Through his prolific work in the field of international humanitarian response, Townes has a first-hand understanding of the necessity of interdisciplinary responses to crises.
“International humanitarian response is becoming a much more professionalized discipline,” Townes said. “The skillset has become more refined and focused, and in that, is the realization that this is a multi-disciplinary endeavor.”
Recognizing this, the certificate aims to provide its students with a robust understanding of prevention, mitigation, response and recovery for crises through an interdisciplinary lens.
“Having people from all different disciplines is key,” Townes said. “Managing all the factors that impact a person’s livelihood requires a multi-disciplinary approach.”
The interdisciplinary educational and experiential opportunities offered through the certificate will enable its students to serve as leaders in humanitarian response, capable of providing a thoughtful intersectional approach to humanitarian action.
“The Population Health Initiative has been tremendously supportive of this work,” Townes said. “The initiative has gotten us together and positioned this work to continue, grow, and hopefully ultimately be successful in helping the populations that need it most.”
In addition to supporting the certificate program as faculty chair, Townes is a professor of Emergency Medicine and Global Health and concurrently serves as a Public Health and Medical Technical Advisor for the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance of the USAID and as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Emergency Response and Recovery Branch (ERRB) at the CDC.
“Being part of the framework that helps some of the most vulnerable, marginalized and disadvantaged populations, and helping these populations is what is most rewarding for me,” Townes said.