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Richard Waldhorn, MD

Contributing Scholar

Professional Profile

Dr. Waldhorn is a Contributing Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine.

From 2004 to 2010, Dr. Waldhorn served as Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC, now the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. In 2020, he returned to the Center as a Contributing Scholar. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his research has focused on hospital, healthcare system, and community preparedness for pandemics and other public health emergencies and the interactions among primary care physicians, public health, and community-based organizations in the response to the pandemic. Dr. Waldhorn also has served on working groups of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research and the American College of Chest Physicians on mass casualty acute hospital and critical care. Additionally, he has spoken at national conferences on hospital and intensive care unit preparedness for mass casualty events and pandemics.

At Georgetown University, Dr. Waldhorn is a senior teacher and mentor for faculty, fellows, residents, and students in the Departments of Medicine and Family Medicine. He directs a course on Public Health and Health Policy for Clinicians, is Co-Director of the Population Health Scholar Track in the School of Medicine, and supervises fellows and residents in clinical care and research in pulmonary and sleep disorders medicine. He served as Chair of the Department of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at Georgetown University Hospital from 2001 to 2004. Prior to that, he directed Georgetown’s Medical Intensive Care Unit, Sleep Disorders Center, and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. He joined the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1981.

Dr. Waldhorn received an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and an MD from Boston University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and pulmonary and critical care medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the American Academy of Sleep Disorders Medicine.